Age: 59 Condition: Mild but constant arthritis in hands and wrists How long she’s been living with it: One year When I was 7 years old, I taught myself to type. My elegant and wealthy Aunt Valerie had seen my handwritten literary aspirations, and bought me an Hermès typewriter. Its keys and space bar were the color of peeled cucumbers, and there was a reptile-embossed, deep forest green hard cover with yellow brass hardware. It was the best thing I had ever seen. As a heavy, portable, manual machine, it was a gorgeous workhorse. I’m right-handed, so I used that hand exclusively to type. Sometimes I’d use my left hand to capitalize and then lowercase letters, but mostly I wouldn’t. My prepubescent logic: If you write with only one hand, why would you type with two? In high school, there was an elective typing class. My left hand was useless and weak as a rag, and the teacher constantly scolded me about using only my right hand.“But I can type as fast as you with just one hand,” I told her. “If you close your eyes, you won’t be able to tell the difference.” She transferred me to a yoga class, where I excelled. My typing style remained intact for the next 45 years. In newsrooms, where I was a features writer, nobody said a word about my typing, and by then all we used were computers, whose keyboards required only the lightest touch to perform. But my Hermès had taught me to type hard, so I continued pounding away. By 1997 or 1998, I went to my internist, complaining of stiffness, soreness, and pain in my right wrist. He carried out a carpal tunnel syndrome test, which I was thrilled to fail. But he told me that decades of asymmetrical typing had taken their toll on my median nerve — a major nerve that travels through the wrist into the palm — and that I needed to sleep with a stiff wrist brace. The worst position for the human hand, he added, is curled under your chin when you sleep in a fetal position — which is exactly how I’d slept all my life. Once I got the hang of wearing the brace — it wouldn’t let me bend my wrist — I couldn’t sleep without it. Every day I awoke to … nothing. No pain, no soreness or stiffness. It was magical. Last year I adopted a new kitten, whom I named Cecilia, or Céci. She was a baby, so playing with her, picking her up, and carrying her around was easy. But as Céci grew and gained weight, I could hardly hold her at 10 pounds. Both of my hands ached, stiffened, and felt as though they were bloated. My new internist now told me I had osteoarthritis and inflammation. “But I wear a wrist brace to sleep!” I said. “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “The whole world is attached to their phones and tablets, and in your case, it’s hereditary.” Indeed, both my maternal grandmother and my mother had and have bad hand arthritis. Thanks, girls. I now do wrist-strengthening exercises with elastic bands and light weights, which really help, and I take the occasional Tylenol Extra Strength when the pain acts up. But when I saw the opportunity to try paraffin baths that promise to “soothe” arthritic hands, I was all in, despite its disclaimer that it’s not for medical use.
What Is HoMedics ParaSpa Plus Paraffin Bath?
If you’ve ever been to a good spa, you’ll recognize this mini-bathtub. It’s big enough to dip a foot or a hand into. You place at least two pounds of paraffin into the unit — it comes with three 1-pound blocks — plug it in, turn it on, and wait an hour or two for the wax to melt. Quick, repetitive hand dips — say, 5 or 10 — result in a penetrating warmth as well as much more hydrated skin once you peel off the paraffin. A nice lagniappe is a plastic bag (the kit comes with 20) that you can cover your waxed hand with to help trap the heat and allow it to penetrate into the skin.
Here’s What Happened When I Tried It
You need a stable surface big enough to sit the tub on. I used a kitchen counter near an electric outlet. Once the wax melted — a red light means it’s heating and don’t use it yet; a green light means it’s ready to use — I dipped my right hand in. Despite the green light saying we were ready to dip, the top wax block hadn’t quite melted. And the wax that had melted was far too hot to touch. I turned off the unit before I continued dipping. The cooling wax felt amazing and dried on contact. The wax felt heavenly as I continued dipping my entire hand in the liquified paraffin. I used a plastic bag to cover my hand and waited a few minutes. When I removed it and peeled off the wax layers, my hand felt like a newborn’s. Baby soft and pain-free. Even my nails looked stronger, glossier.
Three Things I Liked About the Device
- It’s convenient Anything spa-quality I can do at home instead of going to a spa works for me. This is fun, convenient, obviously cheaper, and I can do a luxurious treatment right in my kitchen.
- The stuff works. The warm paraffin calmed my arthritis and felt beyond soothing. Plus the paraffin wax peels right off when you’re ready to remove it. No sticky leftovers as with facial wax. And Céci rubbed her face in my palm afterward. So it’s cat-approved.
- You can reuse the wax. As long as you’re the only one using it, you can remelt it into eternity.
Three Things I Disliked About the Device
- You can’t control the temperature. Many online users complain about the wax being too hot, and they’re right. Of course the wax has to be hot enough to melt, but there should be a warning that some units heat it up way too much to use instantly. You need to let it cool for several minutes with the machine turned off and the lid off before you can comfortably dip.
- You can only do one hand at a time. Naturally, at a spa, you can do both at once because there’s somebody else there to wrap your hands in plastic and whatnot.
- It takes up a lot of room. The clunky box it comes in is big and as you unpack everything in it, you need even more room. I’m still trying to figure out where I’m going to store this sucker and all those plastic bags and the block of wax I didn’t use.
My Personal Take
For home use, I’d say this device is as good as any paraffin treatments I’ve had in a spa. It takes a while to melt that wax, however, so you have to plan ahead. I’m glad I have it because whatever I can do to mitigate my arthritis without meds is a positive. Especially since I type all day and the only time I ever use my other hand is my left thumb to text.
Other Ways I Manage My Arthritis
As I mentioned before, I take over-the-counter meds as needed, stretch with elastic bands, lift light weights, wear a wrist guard at night, and always use a wrist rest on my keyboard and mouse. Now I’ll integrate the ParaSpa Plus Paraffin Bath into my self-care maybe once or twice a week.
