To my musician friends and teachers:

I suppose I should have made this public sooner, but I wasn’t sure about myself then, but I am now. I decided to tag all of you since as musicians, you of all people should have some understanding of what I’m going through. If you’re wondering where I’ve been all this time, you should know that I’ve been spending the semester rehabilitating some injuries that I sustained last year, and again about four months ago. Anyways, beginning sometime around March of 2008, I began to experience pain in both my shoulders along with a nasty grinding noise that accompanied the bowing motion of my arm. I honestly had no idea what was going on since I didn’t even practice that much – around 3 hours/day compared to the 12 hours/day that a few of my friends do. For the time  being, I just thought pain was something that musicians had to live with. I’ve heard that Pinchas Zukerman constantly takes Advil to ameliorate the constant pain that he has. So, I gutted it out for about 9 months until my viola playing deteriorated to an unacceptable level. At the time, my piano playing was still OK, so I called it quits on viola and started focusing on the piano.

Things were going great until I started feeling that weird feeling that I explained in the last post. Indeed,  I did practice the full 3 hours the day after, but I have since forgotten what material I played and how it sounded so I won’t update this blog with that information. Anyways, on that day I simultaneously dislocated the extensor tendons in five of my fingers. So, all of a sudden most of my daily tasks became very uncomfortable, such as typing, cooking, brushing my teeth and so on and so forth, so I decided to see a doctor. I first saw a doctor at the sports medicine clinic at UT, who decided to give me a few blood tests to rule out some common conditions that she suspected me to have. When I got the results back most of them were normal, but I had a speckled pattern of anti-nuclear antibodies, and I had a borderline ANA Titer of 1:40. In otherwords, the tests indicated a presence of abnormal antibodies in my blood. She suspected that I might be showing signs of early Rheumatoid Arthritis, a disease where the body’s immune system attacks it’s own connective tissue, such as tendons, ligaments, and cartilage, which could possibly explain the dislocations in my fingers.

So, I went to a Rheumatologist and she ran some more specific tests for RA and other autoimmune diseases. I remember being scared shitless after seeing the positive result on that last test. Thankfully the more specific tests showed normal levels, so the Rheumatologist concluded that I most likely didn’t have RA or the other diseases she tested me for, to my relief. She did say that the positive ANA Titer did leave me at risk for future autoimmune disorders, so I’d have to keep an eye on that.

About a month ago, I started feeling numbness in both my hands, legs, and face, so the Rheumatologist sent me to a Neurologist who did a nerve conductivity test to make sure my nerves were functioning properly. It was pretty cool I guess – she stuck a bunch of needles in my arms and legs and used a machine to control the movement of my fingers and toes using electrical currents.  So it turns out that I have Ulnar Nerve Entrapment along with Tarsal Tunnel Syndrome, to my surprise. We still have no idea if the numbness has anything to do with the dislocations in my hands so I’m still in the process of seeing doctors to get a diagnosis. Two weeks ago I started having vertigo, which still persistently annoys me.

I have a few speculations as to what’s causing all this, but I won’t know for sure until I get a diagnosis from a medical professional. For one thing, I’m a hypermobile person. This helps most musicians, but for some people it causes a lot of pain and difficulty. I can do a lot of things that most people shouldn’t – for example, I can bend all of my fingers backwards and make them touch my forearms. I can do the splits, and so on and so forth. I’ve read that hypermobile people do tend to suffer more from tendon dislocation and nerve entrapment than most people do. So maybe it’s that, but I don’t know. I saw a hand specialist over spring break and he said there was a surgery to correct the dislocations, but if I didn’t root out the cause of the problem, the dislocations would recur and I’d be back where I started. So, my current plans are to see another specialist in May to see if he can give me some insight. He’s the team doctor for the Houston Astros, and I heard he’s good. Pretty neat, huh?

So during the semester, I’ve spent most of my free time going to the gym to improve my muscular strength and stability. I also started doing cardiovascular exercise to improve my fitness as well. So I ended up having a lot of free time since I haven’t been in orchestra and haven’t been practicing. I got around to running about 7 miles/a day and feeling great until I hurt my ankle. I have no idea what that was but there was a lot of pain and grinding noise that came from my left ankle as I walked. So, in the meantime I started using the elliptical to maintain my cardio. I used to think it was a machine for women and unmanly men, but it’s actually harder than it looks. So, after my ankle healed I decided to go for a two mile run and that felt great, so the next day I did three miles, and the day after that I did three miles again. And then, I ended up getting shin splints so it’s been frustrating. My shins feel a lot better now, so I’ll probably go running again, but more gradually this time. Anyways, strength training has been great. I’ve seen good improvement in my shoulders and hands. My shoulders don’t hurt nearly as much as they did before and they’re almost back to normal. My fingers still lock in place but they’ve slowly been regaining their range of motion.

Today I decided to practice for the first time in a long time. I kept my session short – about an hour long, to test the waters. I practiced C-major scales, arpeggios chords, and cadences, along with a little bit of Hanon, and the Bach Polonaise. To my surprise, I still had it memorized. So there wasn’t any pain today, and I felt pretty good. Tomorrow I plan to play too, and I’ll still keep my practice session short. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get going again. Most people don’t know how playing an instrument can vastly improve your memory if you memorize everything you play. Last semester, my memory was so good that I was able to get all A’s without even studying. But this semester hasn’t been so good. I have to actually study and I’m making mistakes on my tests. But my grades are still relatively good.

Anyways, I’m just asking you all for your support and I’m eternally grateful to have had the opportunity to play with all of you when I was healthy. I understand that most people in the world don’t have the opportunity to play classical music, so I know that I should be grateful for the opportunities chance has given me. I miss it a lot though and I hope to get back to practicing soon.