This is my own experience: I have had a tennis elbow on my right (bow arm) elbow twice, and now I face tendinitis on my left wrist.
t was told in the past that my hand may not be good for playing the violin as my hand width is narrow, but the fingers are long. I often had a minor spring finger at the base of my left little finger (4th finger on the violin).
Actually, I have been away from practicing the violin for about a year, but I have finally came back to it. I wanted to mark my small recital on November 5th to be my re-starting point.
10 days before the recital, I had a small quartet job and we played 6 concerts over 2 days. On top of that, I was preparing for my own recital with my pianist. In order to get back to where I was before being away from practicing for one year, I needed a lot of catch up work to do, especially on one of the program of my recital, Mozart requires a very refined character. I had to work very hard every single day to achieve a good beautiful sound and high accuracy for each note. After my daily practice, besides my teaching, I did not forget to massage my forearms, fingers, hands in order to keep up my good intense practice. I was aiming for good recovery at the end of every day of my fingers and arms, even though myself never felt tired. This was one of my learning from past experience with tennis elbow.
Thanks to that, the recital was successfully completed without any injuries. 😀
12 days later, I had another chance to perform a little job as solo violin without accompaniment, and 7 days later of this opportunity, I had another job to play the quartet again. Also, I was happy to finish my recital and found another goal, so I started to give some everyday task for my left hand. I was keeping up good intense left hand work and enjoy getting back to it. However, during this period, I became totally lazy about doing care treatment on my arms and hands. I was just too happy to finish my recital without injury.
After this quartet job, I suddenly noticed a little swelling was happening about 1 cm below my left wrist along my thumb. (the photo was taken on 11/24/19.)
I had felt a minor spring finger on my left pinky since the time of the recital, but I never felt anything around my left thumb. There was no pain at all. I even thought I might have hit my hand somewhere when I noticed the swelling.
On November 26th, I visited my chiropractic doctor for my usual maintenance, and when I talked him about it, I was told that I had De Quervain’s tenosynovitis (De Quervain disease) and this can get very serious. Some people go for surgery over this problem.
In order to cure
- Rest
- Icing
Was recommended.
As I learned from experiencing tennis elbow on my bow arm, I believe that I will maximize my healing ability and immune system in order to heal this problem without taking any medication. So I will gradually write what I do for healing and the recovery process.
And if it happens again, I’d like to be able to face it without fear.
If you play the violin and suffer from tendinitis, you are not alone. 🙂