Tendinitis

[KyleMontoya]

Fellow tattooer here, with about 20 years of chronic tendonitis. There are a couple things I’ve done that have made it possible for me to continue working. First thing I did was to get a compression band. They are made specifically for this issue. It’s a wide band with an air cushion in one spot. It’s designed to put pressure on a specific spot to open the space where the tendon glides between muscles. This can really help to reduce the friction on the tendon and allow the inflammation to go down when you can’t avoid using that hand. Also, changing your hand position, and hand motion while tattooing can make a huge difference as well.
Other things would depend on exactly where the pain is. When you lay your arm out palm up, is the pain on the outside, or inside?
Outside would be from to much wrist extension (toward back of hand/outside) and inside would be from to much flexion( bending wrist inward) I’d be happy to go more in depth if you want to dm me.

This was it. I needed to keep my wrist straight. I used the compression band, but because I was still working so hard I pulled a muscle in my forearm. I took almost 3 weeks off work I did a couple tattoos with a lot of breaks I could tattoo for about an hour. I just tattooed for four hours using a brace to keep my wrist straight and I feel like I could keep going. Thank you so much!