Broken!

[Libre]

I was reading in the recent El Sueno en la Floresta thread where someone said (David Russell?) that the piece made his left pinky hurt. Funny, I've been working on the piece - or I HAD been - until MY left pinky started hurting like hell too. So I stopped practicing it, but kept playing other stuff (including 5 hours on Sat and Sun at the MET). Today, still hurting, I noticed the finger looked swollen and a little crooked. I decided to get it X-Rayed, and sure enough, THE BONE IS BROKEN.
Not that major a deal, the Dr. says. Of course, it's not his finger. When he stretched it out to reset it, I saw shooting stars and almost passed out.

[kys]

Clearly the broken bone isn't a result of playing..... ??? Physiologically, I am trying to figure out how you would break a bone in your finger by the pressure applied by guitar playing!!!! If so, man Libre, you must have tremendous forearm strength. Tear any New York phone books lately!? :D

[DJH]

How on earth ?!
Really sorry to hear about this ; hope you can get back to playing soon. When does the doctor think you'll be able to ?

Dominic

[ggus]

wow! you must really be hammering it down!

[JoeAlders]

Hello Marc,

I can hardly imagine that a bone can breake 'just like that' !!
There must be some other cause. Please give it a closer examination!!

Joe.

[Techmanac]

Libre

Hope you feel better

your fourm buddy howie

[Libre]

I went for a 2nd opinion today. The 1st Dr was in a walk-in type place. Today I went to an orthopoedic surgeon. He took another set of X-Rays, examined the finger, and declared that there was no evidence of any fracture, that I'd just overstressed it a little, to ease off on my practicing for a couple weeks, and to not go to walk-in doctors anymore.
I must say, I'm greatly relieved.
You can't believe though, the PAIN that the 1st Dr. put me through, shooting novacaine right into the knuckle (2 places) and then yanking on the finger to "set" the bone. I thought this type of thing went out in the 14th-15th centuries.
Anyway, thanks everyone, especially Howie, Joe, Gus, Dom, and kys.
By the way, I do have tremendous forearm strength - but that's in the right arm, not the left. Must be from all the exercise it's had over the years!

[PedroO]

Oestheoporosis comes to mind! :cry:

Drink milk!

[Steve Lin]

And the only way to drink milk is to have lots of home-made cookies at hand.

Yes... I've been baking cookies. Tons of fun, I might add.

[JoeAlders]

Hello Marc,

How is the recovery of your 4th finger going? Are you playing again?

Joe.

[Libre]

Hey Joe-
Feeling a little better.
Ever time it's feeling okay and I start to practice, I loose ground with it and it starts to hurt again. I almost went out to the MET to play today, but I tested it out before leaving and sure enough it started to hurt almost immediately.
I think I need to just lay off completely for a few weeks and see.
Very frustrating - but that's how it is - at least it's not seriously injured - I hope.

[JoeAlders]

Hello Marc,

Yes, I think you have to stop playing for a longer period to prevent permanent inflamation.
It looks to me (but I am not a GP of course!) that it is tendonitis.
I had this a few months ago with my 2nd finger and was forced to stop
playing for several weeks.
Brian Hayes, a member of this Forum wrote an article on this subject.
Perhaps you can download this and read his advice.

Joe.

[Moderato]

I injured my pinky finger a while ago also but it was actually the muscle where the bone is on the back of your hand, i.e. between the wrist and the first knucle. I had so much pain right in that spot whenever I used the pinky finger. In fact I got so frustrated that I just stopped playing classical guitar for a while because I felt it was too difficult to try and get the instrument to play these songs due to the overwhellming techincal issues we classical guitarsts face.

Sometimes it just seems that the guitar just wasn't meant to play some of these complicated finger contortion pieces. As if that wasn't enough guitar IMO still to this day doesn't command the respect from the "common person" that other instruments do. For example tell someone you play the piano, violin or cello and they will be like "wow, that's great." Tell someone you play classical guitar and you get three responses, "what's that?" or "oh yeah whatever, the guitar" or "I like classical guitar."

It almost seems that most people either know what classical guitar is, or have practically no interest in it. There doesn't seem to be as much "in between" as there is with say, the piano. I swear 50% of the time if I play Bach, Chopin, Granados, Albeniz, Lauro, Dowland, Tarrega, Llobet, Sor, etc.....it's like no is paying attention. Then I'll start to play Hotel California, Led Zeppelin, present day songs and everyone's like "Oh that's Great!", "I love that", blah, blah, blah. I'm talking young to old, many seem to have this reaction, and the funny thing is that it's so easy to strum chords and get attention, however to play the great composers and transcribers I listed above take enormous amounts of work, even to the point we can injure ourselves doing it!

I'm not hating on the guitar, I've played it for over 17 years now. I've put it down and picked it up and fell in love with it all over again more then once but sometimes I wonder if for all the work I put into classical guitar my efforts would be better spent towards playing an instrument that to put it bluntly "works the way it should."

:(

[brian richardson]

marc-
sounds like tendonitis to me.
i 'caught' it in my left pinky from playing
villa lobos prelude#2 every day over and over and over and..over the
course of a few months. part of the problem was the crazy
action on a wonderful guitar that desperately needed
a neck reset.

not to be a bummer but, that was in the mid 90's
and it's never left me alone 100% since.


Moderato-
one way to keep their attention while playing
classical guitar is to either have a great light show
with lotza explosions and chicks or, just play in the buff :lol:

[rdubb]

The pinky is very suspetible to injury. No less than the great Manuel Barrueco has had to contend with a debilitating pinky injury (apparently it took him 3 years to fully recover from his).

The problem in my opinion isn't so much the guitar itself or the rep. Its pretty much that we don't know how to practice properly. (If the guitar were so ergonomically wrong than John Williams and Ana Vidovic wouldn't exist (its that they were trained from an early age as to how to practice properly) Look behind almost every injury and you'll find the person practcing the same passage incessantly for upwards of 20 mintues to an hour with no rest, and not rotating between different kinds of challenges to spread the work out over the hand. Add to that the mindset of 'I've gotta get this right!" or "damn it!" or "oh **** what if I don't get this perfect by Friday" and you've got yourself a recipie for disaster.

Face it - guitarists are mostly in the dark ages when it comes to knowing how to practice properly. The state of teaching is mostly horrible, espeicially with those out there attempting to teach themselves. While players of other instruments do get injured, they are more typically taught to take frequent breaks, stretch, use minimal effort, proper posture, dont overdo technique, and move on if something is particulary difficult with the knowledge that over time it will be mastered. There is also the endemic problem of guitarists trying to play pieces that are way to advanced for them -for example if one has been playing for 2 years its suicidal to try to play any of the tarrega or albeniz show pieces. Impatience and ego are very often the psychological context for injury.

I'm speaking fro personal experience here - i threw way too much on my plate in 2003 and my ulnar nerve / pinky / left side of my hand got so ****ed up I couldn't play for a year.

[stringstudent]

Libre,

Hope you are pain-free soon, but I would suggest you take it easy for awhile. I'm no stranger to hand injuries and from my experience, they tend to linger...

rdubb,

I totally agree with your point. I've also fallen victim to the "gonna force this until I get it" practice mode, usually involving greater and greater amounts of stress, tension and force. Being a rather competitive type, with a penchant for working harder than anyone else, and lots of sports in my past doesn't help, I think. Libre, I'm guessing you might have some of these qualities.

My teacher turned me on to "The Art of Practicing" (Madeline Bruser, 1999) which is mostly about piano, although there's bits about the guitar. Mostly it talks a lot about how we approach practice from a physical, mental and emotional standpoint. I suspect you professionals are quite familiar with the concepts in this book (most of which rdubb outlined in his post), but it was quite enlightening to me. I've learned there's lots of wrong (potentially damaging) ways to practice. Not saying that's what caused your injury, Libre.

Good luck with your recovery,

ss

[oc chuck]

Hey Libra,

imho-
I'm sure you've used ice on it.
You should ( there's that word of adivce))
soak it in cold water 2 or 3 times a day.

Ligaments and tendons are slow to heal
because they get so little blood flow to them.

Could also be a pinched nerve in the forearm.
This would need further treatment........
and a proper diagnosis of course.

Good luck!!!

I think separation and flexibilty in the big knuckles
is a great asset .......

for all my stretching and exercises for the hand,
I will never achieve this.......always had tight
tendons and ligiments........

[Libre]

Ice!
Good idea - didn't think of it. And, neither did either doctor.
It's feeling a lot better - still looks weird though. I don't know if it has looked this weird for a long time or just since it started to hurt.

I definitely have those qualities that stringstudent mentioned. But, I'm really not very diciplined about practice at all. Sometimes I get totally bored with the whole thing, my repetoire seems all stale, and I have little desire to work on anything, and I don't. Then all of a sudden I'll get all worked up about a piece or a technical concept and practice many hours, for days and days, way beyond the point of any benefit and venturing into the territory of injury - and that's what happened here.

[rdubb]

I hope it works out well for you Marc. My advice would be to just completely lay off practicing until you get a diagnosis from a specialist. In case you're interested, Johns Hopkins in DC has a specialty Hand Center - I emailed Barrueco's manager (whom I think is his wife/partner, Asgeurder) and she told me about it.

[Libre]

thanks, rdubb.
Words of wisdom.
I did have a specialist xray and examine it - he told me it was just overused - and to lay off for awhile too.
Looks like a nice weekend, tho.
Probably go out at least 1 day.

[stringstudent]

Ice!
Good idea - didn't think of it. And, neither did either doctor.
It's feeling a lot better - still looks weird though. I don't know if it has looked this weird for a long time or just since it started to hurt.

I definitely have those qualities that stringstudent mentioned. But, I'm really not very diciplined about practice at all. Sometimes I get totally bored with the whole thing, my repetoire seems all stale, and I have little desire to work on anything, and I don't. Then all of a sudden I'll get all worked up about a piece or a technical concept and practice many hours, for days and days, way beyond the point of any benefit and venturing into the territory of injury - and that's what happened here.

Hey Marc,

I know you're getting advice from all quarters about this, but I wanted to add my 2 cents...

Be careful with ice/cold water. With all due respect to oc chuck, cold will actually reduce blood flow. It's good for reducing inflamation and pain, but freezing it up will only slow down the healing (like I mentioned before, I've been through lots of sports injuries).

One technique that was prescribed to me was alternating warm and cold. The cold reduces inflamation and the warm rushes blood into the area and helps it heal. The warm can inflame the area, though, and the cold helps with that. You can do warm water for 10 minutes, then cold water for 10. Also, there's nothing like a little over the counter anti-inflamatories (ibuprofen).

Also, a really good massage therapist can help with soft-tissue stuff. I've had amazing results even on an achilles tendon with good deep tissue massage therapy.

If you haven't already, check out that book (Art of Practicing). It may help you re-approach your practice time. It was helpful to me. Good luck,

ss

[qiliu]

I used to be in professional sports. What I learned is that icing the area immediately right after the injury happens will help reduce the inflamation leading to swelling while warming the injury area after 3 or 4 days later will help blood circulate in the injury area leading to fast healing.