Kate Benessa

Be prepared — this post is destined to be awfully dull reading and a bit too long.  I’ve decided to tell my story in its mind-numbing, tedious entirety.  I’m doing it out of acknowledgement and sympathy for other sufferers and all the crazy things they have thought and tried.  And I’m doing it for anyone who is currently experiencing similar difficulties with the intent that they will recognize more quickly the symptoms of focal dystonia and not waste ten sad years wondering what the hell is going on with their hand!

So, back to the story:

I still didn’t know what was causing my problem so I pushed every technical button possible with the hope of finding that one particular exercise which had alluded me, and once discovered would steer me back to the path of recovery.  I began to pursue more extreme measures to correct my difficulties.  I used medical adhesive tape to tape my fingers together (m and a, or i and m).  I thought I could retrain my fingers to stay in a nice relaxed curve, thus preventing the m finger from curling in so radically. There seemed to be some immediate progress, which didn’t last and ultimately, my control was worse than ever.

Finding that slow practice made no difference I began to work loudly and quickly without a metronome – speed bursts. I emphasized keeping the thumb outside.  Since m was not working properly, my hand bounced to compensate (a problem I’d never had before).  To prevent the hand from bouncing I tried to keep it steady by working on tremolo (the flamenco version, starting with i rather than a, ex: piamipiami).  My only reason for trying the flamenco tremolo was to trick my hand into behaving by changing typical practice techniques.  As I write this, it doesn’t make a bit of sense, but at the time….oh, well.

And another misguided experiment….I tried holding the pinky into palm, which forced my other fingers outward.  The intention of this absurd idea was to prevent the m from curling in.  Once again I saw immediate improvement, which then it worsened.  Eventually, I cut out playing pieces all together, reducing my work to only exercises:  scales, arpeggios, tremolo.

Of course, I know now that the work I was doing – specifically, repetitive exercises – was exasperating the problem.  Tenfold.

I was at my wit’s end.  My beloved guitar.  The thing I loved most, what I had worked at since I was 13, what I majored in, what I taught, what was supposed to be my career, had slipped away and I had no explanation for it.  I’d had no accident.  The only kind of musician’s repetitive stress injuries I had heard of was carpel tunnel syndrome and tendonitis.  I knew I wasn’t experiencing either of those maladies.  I had no pain.  The only way I could describe the experience was that it seemed like I had had a stroke isolated to one hand.

By Jan 2004 (almost 3 years after the symptoms began) I decided to check the internet to see if it was indeed possible to have some sort of isolated stroke. This idea sounds bizarre now, even to me, but it was the only way I could think of to describe the problem. I searched “musician’s injuries”.  Page after page of carpel tunnel and tendonitis-related sites popped up before I finally discovered focal dystonia.  I had never heard of it.   But, at last!  A condition that seemed to describe what I was experiencing.  However, the information was minimal, at best.  Most sites focused on other dystonias  – focal dystonia in musicians was a footnote.  Certainly no cure was mentioned.

Eventually, I discovered  information about guitarist, David Leisner, and how he recovered on his own accord by his own method.  Unfortunately, there was very little information on how he did it (which is no longer true – just click on his name!).  I emailed him immediately.  The only way he knew to help at that time was by teaching his physical therapy/practice technique in person.  Well, living in Colorado with a family and a new business and very little money, made a week in NYC with lessons and hotel and air unlikely.

Later that year I read a descriptive article about focal dystonia which discussed the connection of the nerves in the fingers to the brain. After many years of repetitive movement the nerves slowly rewire themselves, connecting together and combining functions to form one large superfinger. The brain thinks it is helping by making all your fingers function as one, rather than making a lot of tiny individual strokes.  This idea made so much sense to me. It explained why my focal dystonia started to develop when my technique was at its most efficient and my playing had reached its peak.  It also explained how my playing worsened gradually, imperceptibly, at first.

This article was encouraging!  If the nerves could train themselves to make my fingers function as one, couldn’t they be retrained to function separately?  The question remained:  how was I to make that happen?  And could I?