Merely considering the above title and ultimately writing it is like taking a blow to the stomach. Even seven years later. Inconceivable.
In early 2004 I learned at last what focal dystonia was via the internet. Giving this personal disaster a name was comforting, even empowering. However, there was no available knowledge on how to repair the damage or prevent the condition from escalating further. In fact, the prognosis was dismal. No known cure.
Who could accept that? I continued to search for the magic button, the one trick which would return my playing back to what it once was.
In attempting to isolate the problem I became obsessively concerned with any type of repetitive motion pertaining to my right hand. I oscillated between not using my right hand at all to using the m finger exclusively. In our pizzeria where I rolled dough in the morning I changed my technique and started rolling dough with only the left hand. I tried carrying heavy pans and dough trays differently. I confused a neurological disorder affecting specific fingers with carpel tunnel syndrome which is aggravated by stress on the tendons in the wrist and hand. Additionally, with many hours of accounting and bookkeeping to do, I worried about excessive use of a calculator and in this case would only use the m finger. Futile.
On the guitar I considered not using the least functioning finger, m, at all, and thought to replace it with the mostly unused pinky finger. I discovered the method book, Right Hand Studies for Five Fingers, by Charles Postlewate. I added many five finger exercises, wondering if working the pinky finger would awaken the nerve signals to the brain and rebalance my hand. I communicated with Mr. Postlewate by email. He was quite encouraging and had heard from another woman with focal dystonia who also felt that his exercises developing the pinky finger were beneficial. While I find it advantageous for a guitarist to develop the entire hand including the pinky, I hadn’t experienced any improvement in my problem that could cross over to regular playing. Perhaps I didn’t give it enough time.
Despite personal problems life continues unabated, insisting that we focus on matters unrelated to playing guitar. By the end of the year my husband and I welcomed a lovely, little daughter and subsequently I cut out playing almost entirely. I had reached a point in which I just didn’t know what I could to do to improve my hand. Nothing was helpful in any significant way. Furthermore, I was concerned that what was not improving my condition could be harming it. As sad and difficult as it was not to play I was so consumed with the new tiny baby, that sooner than I could have imagined, the guitar and focal dystonia became a distant nagging ache.
Other than two weddings for cousins (who could say no?) and a few previously scheduled gigs, I didn’t play at all. Indeed I endured those isolated performances with an increasingly clenched right hand and an overwhelming sense of loss and frustration.
Amazingly, it seems, I had quit. Quit playing guitar. The thought would have been unfathomable to me if it hadn’t happened so gradually, so insidiously.
And yet an ember remained in my heart that refused to extinguish completely.
