I thought I'd share some good health news since we often see double bass players discussing issues we have physically playing into older age.
Backstory - I have some serious underlying health issues that caused a lot of nerve damage and soft issue injuries over the years. For years I've been playing with pain, numbness, and all kinds of fun stuff in my left hand, arm, etc. I always thought it was just related to my lifelong health issues. I take great care of my body, but some things can't be remedied with diet and exercise. My attitude was that I'm going to keep playing until I can't, whenever that is.
So about a year ago I started to really develop problems with my left hand, thumb, and tendons. Instead of having issues when I was playing, I now had them all day. It would get especially bad the morning after a gig. We have a really good PT on staff at work so I gave him a call. He examined my wrist for about 30 seconds and identified a ganglion cyst that he recommended I see an ortho about. So I did. It turns out that the cyst originated inside the inside of my wrist joint, and was putting pressure on nerves, vessels, tendons. They drained it once, but withing 2 months it was back and so were my problems. So I decided on the surgery. That happened in February.
Surgery was a success, but also a good news bad news thing. Turns out that when they got in there, I had a bunch of damage and clean up needed to some tendons. So instead of a two week recovery, it was now an 8 week recovery. Just the thing you want to hear when they wake you up out of anesthesia.
I wont bore you with the recovery and PT. For the first time in at least a decade, I don't have pain and numbness when I play. While I'll never be Ray Brown, it's amazing how much freer you can play when you aren't dealing with those things. My first post-op upright gig is in a coupe of weeks.
Backstory - I have some serious underlying health issues that caused a lot of nerve damage and soft issue injuries over the years. For years I've been playing with pain, numbness, and all kinds of fun stuff in my left hand, arm, etc. I always thought it was just related to my lifelong health issues. I take great care of my body, but some things can't be remedied with diet and exercise. My attitude was that I'm going to keep playing until I can't, whenever that is.
So about a year ago I started to really develop problems with my left hand, thumb, and tendons. Instead of having issues when I was playing, I now had them all day. It would get especially bad the morning after a gig. We have a really good PT on staff at work so I gave him a call. He examined my wrist for about 30 seconds and identified a ganglion cyst that he recommended I see an ortho about. So I did. It turns out that the cyst originated inside the inside of my wrist joint, and was putting pressure on nerves, vessels, tendons. They drained it once, but withing 2 months it was back and so were my problems. So I decided on the surgery. That happened in February.
Surgery was a success, but also a good news bad news thing. Turns out that when they got in there, I had a bunch of damage and clean up needed to some tendons. So instead of a two week recovery, it was now an 8 week recovery. Just the thing you want to hear when they wake you up out of anesthesia.
I wont bore you with the recovery and PT. For the first time in at least a decade, I don't have pain and numbness when I play. While I'll never be Ray Brown, it's amazing how much freer you can play when you aren't dealing with those things. My first post-op upright gig is in a coupe of weeks.
