I suspected this deep downinside, but kept the stiff upper lip and kept marching on. My neurologist said I have dystonia and has prescribed Baclofen which is a muscle relaxant that messes with the GABA part of the nervous system in the spine. This medication helps, but it makes me so sleepy and has other side-effects I need to watch for even on the smallest dose I’m on at the moment.
In the middle of last year I started with odd pain in the bottomside of my fingers on my left hand. It wasn’t terribly bad and felt more like sore muscles or tendons like you get in your feet from walking a lot, or up in your shoulders when tense. When I stopped practicing the piano, the pain went away, making me think it was muscle strain due to all the tension in my house at the time. As time went on, the left hand got worse. I thought I had done some joint damage from the Chopin Polonaise I was working on with the needed big chord hand positions and stretches by doing something stupid like playing with the wrong fingering, and causing tendonitis by misreading a 3 for a 2, or something else really stupid.
What was odd too is the left hand also would “get goofy”, meaning instead of the 4[SUP]th[/SUP] finger doing what it was supposed to do, the thumb would move instead, or the 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] finger would move instead of the 5[SUP]th[/SUP], which is very annoying and made me make a lot of mistakes. I also had issues where suddenly I couldn’t play crossed hands, or hands together. Scales too were broken, which really annoyed me because I got A+ grades on my scales while at university. I normally can play 4-octaves in any scale accurately, but this time nope they fell apart and badly.
I also couldn’t role chords quickly or trill quickly. My trills in Mozart are breathtaking and a subject of some jealousy from some of my previous teachers. They went from smooth and quick, and finished to a blub,blub, blub, clumsy sounding mess. A turn too in both hands together was confusing. I couldn’t coordinate the two hands to do this, or initiate any turn in the left hand for that matter. I started to panic because I didn’t know what was happening at first. It was as if I forgot how to do things. When that occurred, I would stop and play something else and then got back to what I was doing, and everything was fine.
Finger slips usually occurred in really complex pieces such as a Bach Fugue with all the voices and parts doing things, or the Beethoven sonatas I’ve been working on, and I thought it was me being stupid. The turn and trill issues occurred sporadically and I attributed that to me being stressed and tired, then it all went away and I forgot about it because it was as if nothing happened and everything was normal including the tight fingers.
But I should have known! If I rubbed the palm of my left hand, the fingers curled tightly and painfully, and this wasn’t just occurring in my left hand now. My right hand too got into the act. One day while talking with my brother about nothing in particular, my right thumb decided to fold its self over on to my index finger. The pain was awful and I couldn’t move it away without taking my other hand and pulling on it gently to loosen it up. I also had painful spasms in both feet, and occasionally on my right side too which would wake me up in the wee hours. In fact I had this in the feet first then it was the hands. If I touched a foot the wrong way during the night, like when scratching an itch on the outside of the foot, the spasms would kick in with unrelenting pain! My neurologist increased my anti-Parkinson medication and that worked initially, but I developed side-effects that forced me to stop them completely which added to the problem. Seeing bugs, hearing things, and seeing rats is not fun, and neither is the awful flu-like nausea.
Just as more panic set in, everything went away again except for the stiffness in my left hand, and then about a month ago, I was playing and this really hurt the bottom of my hand again where the index finger connects to the palm. Suddenly after rubbing that spot, a dark bruise and lump appeared! I got scared and I made an earlier than scheduled appointment with my doctor. After the examination, my neurologist said it wasn’t the piano playing that caused it (I did a silent happy dance in my head when she said that), and it’s from the tendons tightening up into what they call contractions. At my appointment last Friday, she also noticed that I make a fist with my left hand while walking, which is tight enough to cause bruises in the palm where my fingers dig in.
After all this I know it’s going to take time to get back to ‘normal’ if I can. I need to give the Baclofen time to get into my system so I can hopefully get back to playing. My doctor told me to stay away from the keyboards for a few weeks (A few weeks!!!!). She plays the violin and piano and understands my predicament here with stopping, and we usually talk about Beethoven at most of the visits. She said for me to see her in 6-months unless something else happens. Fingers crossing here, no pun intended, there are no “something else’s that require earlier visits.
In the middle of last year I started with odd pain in the bottomside of my fingers on my left hand. It wasn’t terribly bad and felt more like sore muscles or tendons like you get in your feet from walking a lot, or up in your shoulders when tense. When I stopped practicing the piano, the pain went away, making me think it was muscle strain due to all the tension in my house at the time. As time went on, the left hand got worse. I thought I had done some joint damage from the Chopin Polonaise I was working on with the needed big chord hand positions and stretches by doing something stupid like playing with the wrong fingering, and causing tendonitis by misreading a 3 for a 2, or something else really stupid.
What was odd too is the left hand also would “get goofy”, meaning instead of the 4[SUP]th[/SUP] finger doing what it was supposed to do, the thumb would move instead, or the 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] finger would move instead of the 5[SUP]th[/SUP], which is very annoying and made me make a lot of mistakes. I also had issues where suddenly I couldn’t play crossed hands, or hands together. Scales too were broken, which really annoyed me because I got A+ grades on my scales while at university. I normally can play 4-octaves in any scale accurately, but this time nope they fell apart and badly.
I also couldn’t role chords quickly or trill quickly. My trills in Mozart are breathtaking and a subject of some jealousy from some of my previous teachers. They went from smooth and quick, and finished to a blub,blub, blub, clumsy sounding mess. A turn too in both hands together was confusing. I couldn’t coordinate the two hands to do this, or initiate any turn in the left hand for that matter. I started to panic because I didn’t know what was happening at first. It was as if I forgot how to do things. When that occurred, I would stop and play something else and then got back to what I was doing, and everything was fine.
Finger slips usually occurred in really complex pieces such as a Bach Fugue with all the voices and parts doing things, or the Beethoven sonatas I’ve been working on, and I thought it was me being stupid. The turn and trill issues occurred sporadically and I attributed that to me being stressed and tired, then it all went away and I forgot about it because it was as if nothing happened and everything was normal including the tight fingers.
But I should have known! If I rubbed the palm of my left hand, the fingers curled tightly and painfully, and this wasn’t just occurring in my left hand now. My right hand too got into the act. One day while talking with my brother about nothing in particular, my right thumb decided to fold its self over on to my index finger. The pain was awful and I couldn’t move it away without taking my other hand and pulling on it gently to loosen it up. I also had painful spasms in both feet, and occasionally on my right side too which would wake me up in the wee hours. In fact I had this in the feet first then it was the hands. If I touched a foot the wrong way during the night, like when scratching an itch on the outside of the foot, the spasms would kick in with unrelenting pain! My neurologist increased my anti-Parkinson medication and that worked initially, but I developed side-effects that forced me to stop them completely which added to the problem. Seeing bugs, hearing things, and seeing rats is not fun, and neither is the awful flu-like nausea.
Just as more panic set in, everything went away again except for the stiffness in my left hand, and then about a month ago, I was playing and this really hurt the bottom of my hand again where the index finger connects to the palm. Suddenly after rubbing that spot, a dark bruise and lump appeared! I got scared and I made an earlier than scheduled appointment with my doctor. After the examination, my neurologist said it wasn’t the piano playing that caused it (I did a silent happy dance in my head when she said that), and it’s from the tendons tightening up into what they call contractions. At my appointment last Friday, she also noticed that I make a fist with my left hand while walking, which is tight enough to cause bruises in the palm where my fingers dig in.
After all this I know it’s going to take time to get back to ‘normal’ if I can. I need to give the Baclofen time to get into my system so I can hopefully get back to playing. My doctor told me to stay away from the keyboards for a few weeks (A few weeks!!!!). She plays the violin and piano and understands my predicament here with stopping, and we usually talk about Beethoven at most of the visits. She said for me to see her in 6-months unless something else happens. Fingers crossing here, no pun intended, there are no “something else’s that require earlier visits.
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