Do you have constant pain, no matter whether you move your joints or not? Can you move or at least exert pressure with your fingers/fingertips without causing additional pain to your wrists etc.? If you can at least move your fingers or exert pressure with your fingertips without causing extra pain then I guess you could find someone (a company, an engineer, maybe even a handy college engineering/mechanics/electronics or whatever student) to build you a custom controller for your computer which would resemble the functions of a mouse. You would have to find out what works best for you, but from the top of my head I could imagine something like this: 2 straps placed directly under two of your fingers, moving upwards/downwards with one finger on one strap would move the (mouse) pointer on the screen up/down, moving your second finger on the second strap would move the pointer to the left/right. Below the other two fingers you could place buttons that would act as mouse buttons. This way your whole body could stay in a relaxed position and all you would need to move would be the tips of your fingers. Something like that… With time I’m sure you could probably even start to draw and paint this way (hell, I saw people drawing and playing guitar with their TOES :o).
Sure, such a custom controller would cost more than a plain mouse, but at the end it sure would be worth it, right? Also, for typing, a while ago I read about an invention - a kind of “keyboard glove” - that allowed you to type by simply pressing your thumb against marked spots on the other fingers of the same hand - again, hardly (if at all) any movement of the wrist(s) envolved. I would look into these things. The “keyboard glove” was actually working and production ready, the guy who invented it was some German scientist as far as I remember, last thing I heard was he tried to patent it in the USA I believe… But even if you can’t buy it in the stores yet, I believe the principle behind it was quite simple, some handy guy could probably make you one in his own garage (the prototype was also hand-crafted using the simplest tools and materials as far as I remember).
Last but not least - but this is probably a really long shot - there is research done in controlling the computer (or at least the cursor on the screen) using brain waves. First results seem promising, there already even exist prototypes of such “controllers”. Probably however, for this to be actually useful and affordable, you’d have to wait some more years. But what I’m trying to say is, there is light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s actually not THAT far away.
I would look into that “custom mouse controller” and that “keyboard glove”, though, this is something you could use NOW, and it would not cost you a fortune.
Believe me, I know how it feels to have that unstoppable urge inside of you to express yourself through art, and I hope you will find a way to do so. I am not a physician, but by the descriptions of your symptoms I infer you have some form of syringomyelia (am I right?) and I read in some cases it can be partially healed or at least brought to a halt. Good luck, dude.
