Tendonitis

I'm tagging this "guitar technique" because I don't have a "music and health" tag. Yesterday I was diagnosed with tendonitis. I have played guitar for over fifty years and never had a problem, but now I do. The irony is that for quite a few years now I have been the guy professional guitarists come to when they have a problem with tension, technique or tendonitis. I have been fairly successful in helping with these kinds of problems. I even wrote a book on guitar technique. So how did I come down with tendonitis at my advanced age, especially since I retired from my performing career a long time ago? I only ever had one student with a tendonitis problem in many years of teaching.

Here is the context: last fall, for the first time in several years, I gave a mini-concert for a private audience. I played a short program of music from Milan to Rodrigo. Preparing for the program I dropped a piece by Moreno Torroba because I found that my bar chord technique was not up to it. I do daily technique just to keep a minimal amount of technique, but my index finger was not strong enough for some bar chords. So I did three things: I replaced the Torroba with a piece by Rodrigo that did not have awkward bar chords, I switched from hard tension to medium tension strings and I instituted a set of bar chord exercises that I practiced every morning. After a few months I had restored my bar chord technique. But I noticed that I had developed some tenderness in my elbow, so I stopped those exercises hoping the tenderness would go away. A couple of weeks later I was making a pan sauce in a heavy cast-iron pan and holding the pan at a steep angle to pour out the sauce when suddenly I got a very sharp pain in my elbow--it almost felt as if something had given way. Agh! Now I have a serious case of tendonitis which is an inflammation of a tendon.

I emailed my doctor and she sent an ultrasound technician to my house to take pictures of my elbow. A couple of days later I visited her in her office where she prescribed an anti-inflammatory, a cream, and a muscle relaxant. While in her office she had an orthopedic surgeon pop in just to have a look at my elbow and confirm the diagnosis. Also, Monday, a physiotherapist is going to come by my house and show me an exercise for my arm. No permanent damage and I should be back to normal in a few weeks.

If this range of services sounds weird or implausible, especially the home visits, I should tell you that this is private medicine in Mexico which is actually very reasonable. My doctor heads up a team that offers emergency and radiological services, home services, x-rays, ultrasound, nursing care, laboratory studies and so on. They even have their own ambulance. The orthopedic surgeon who dropped by is a member of the team.

Anyway, I will keep you posted on my recovery! Here is the piece by Rodrigo I swapped in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvNNaUXkHp4