Hello everyone, I just joined the boards
and have quite a story to tell about my
mysterious ailment that I hope someone can
help shed some light on as it's been the
bane of my existence for quite some time
now.
I will try to keep it suckers and
summarized as possible:
I'm a 24 year old male, I have been
playing piano for a few years. Everything
was going pretty good. Two years ago in
early 2005 I got a job in a butcher shop
that seemed to have damaged my right hand
pretty badly. Working in a very cold
environment full time, often in the
freezer, and using the meathooks to hoist
and heave heavy chunks of meat all day I
developed pretty bad "trigger finger" in
most of the fingers in my right hand, with
my middle and 4th fingers being the worst.
During this 5 or so month period that I
worked there, I did not play the piano
anyway because I had no time since I had
another part time job on top of this.
Eventually, after I quit the trigger
finger mostly went away and I resumed
playing the piano and had a very good
first half of 2006.
Then towards the middle of 2006 my right
hand, or more specifically, what I think
to be my right middle finger, just began
to fall part and come undone. Little by
little I found it hard to control it and
though at the time I had no idea of what
was going on I later thought it to be a
possible late onset focal dystonia (maybe
it is but the coincidence is unlikely).
Now, I am completely unable to play the
piano and haven't done so since middle to
late 2006 and can barely even type.
The description of the symptoms is as
follows:
it first started as a sudden tendency of
my middle finger to RISE everytime that my
4th (ring) finger was being used.
Furthermore at times after playing I would
feel a stiffness or tightness in the right
hand and/or finger and sometimes slight
shooting pains or tightness going down the
whole bottom side of the forearm. To this
day the middle finger rises uncontrollably
everytime the 4th finger is being used
(unless I am pressing down the 4th finger
very slowly and isolated). But the biggest
problem seems to be the middle finger just
FEELS very weak in a sense. It's hard to
describe but placing the fingers on the
piano keys or the keyboard to type, the
middle (3rd) finger simply doesn't seem to
want to follow my brain's instructions to
PRESS down and when it does so, it takes
half a second longer than the rest of the
fingers and feels umcomfortable in a
strange way in the process. Any action my
brain sends to the middle finger to press
down seems to get delayed and causes the
finger to feel tense or uncomfortable and
like I said it rises into the air
uncontrollably everytime the 4th finger is
pressed down. Of course to an extent this
is natural, as my left does this also but
the right middle finger rises extremely
high into the air to the point where it
takes it very long (relatively speaking)
to come back down and by then it makes
playing passages in piano or typing at
speed impossible!
Please help me shed some light on this or
at least lead me to the right direction.
My primary questions are: is it possible
that all of this is the cause of the
injuries I sustained in that butcher shop
and the severe trigger finger that
afflicted my right hand? And if so, why
did it not become full blown and
completely deteriorate my hand into
uselessness nearly a full year
afterwards?
And the most important question obviously:
what can I do to fix this and is it even
possible to ever alleviate or fix this
problem? Please help, any tips or ideas at
all as this problem has for the most part
ruined my life!
Thank you in advance for anyone that
helps!
Note to moderators: please notify me if
this is posted in the wrong forum as I
have searched in earnest for a more
fitting forum and have not found one - the
carpal tunnel/arthritis was the closest
but it's not it, I am 100% certain this
problem is NOT carpal or arthritis!
