Oh dear. It's not just the keyboard layout that's ruining my hands (though it plays a big part of it). It's the jagged/staggered form of 99% of keyboards!
Guess this will be the beginning of the end for my rusty trusty Happy Hacker Keyboard (Lite 2). Need to look into the keyboard-building community and see what crazy things they came up with.
@rocx I've built an Ergodox (slightly too large for my hands) and a Planck (maybe a little too narrow for me). I think a "Let's Split" might be perfect for me. Used normanlayout.info on both, maintain qwerty on staggered.