Two years and a few months later, I am in a self-imposed rehabilitation. For one whom plays guitars, it has been a powerful journey enduring the loss of finger function. Being right handed, the left does the fingering on the fretboard. When the elemental basic index finger of that hand fails its functional ability, playing the instrument becomes near impossible. Logically speaking that is true after playing guitars and other stringed instruments for over 50 years, muscle memory is well ingrained into the activity of playing these instruments.
This finger began its decline gradually, showing up as stiffness and ever so slightly as painful. This occurred at the onset of playing only, a condition that would quickly fade through a song or two’s duration while warming up on any given day. Over a period of more than five months this condition progressively became worse. The associated pain was in the joint of the last digit as a focal point, yet it seemed to somewhat extend via the controlling tendons, well into the top of the hand. Another symptom that gradually developed was a clicking in that joint when flexing from the fully extended position. As the progression of these symptoms continued to increase, it began to ache after playing, then that too amplified over time. So it was late November of 2019, when I concluded to rest the finger for a few days, to see if it would reduce these symptoms. Letting a week pass without playing (a difficult issue with long standing desires and habitually playing daily) when playing again, the same conditions reoccurred. Initial stiffness and clicking in the, joint. This clicking had been and remained very faint. I’d have to hold my finger right next to my ear and flex it for it to be audibly noticeable. And again these symptoms receded rather quickly through playing a few songs. This time however, after ceasing play, the ache became much stronger. I concluded to rest the finger for a more extensive period, this time 3 weeks. It was Christmas day when I next played. This time the stiffness didn’t work out, yet I forced playing for 15 minutes, may be a half hour, before I concluded the situation to be intolerable. I concluded a further period of rest to be a requirement.
Resting the finger seemed impossible at this point. It truly hurt, near constantly, and engaging the finger for ordinary everyday function seemingly caused a furthering of its inflammation and severity of ache. I then tried splinting it, doing so for two weeks or more. At the end of this time the finger’s condition showed as much worse. I couldn’t bend the last joint but a few degrees, and it remained very sore. My grand passion had been removed completely, all ability to play music was fully gone. It was also winter in the north, where being outside is quite inhospitable.
By the onset of spring the pandemic had further altered life, not only was I unable to play music, quarantine conditions introduced an extended alone condition. Isolation with nothing to do, a bad, bad combination. But I thought to try playing a guitar one day, finding the same result as the previous attempt on Christmas day. I was devastated emotionally, but had to carry on in life, still without the things I know how to do and retain an ability for doing. Spine injuries previously stripped away the joyful activities I'd known in life, years before.
Watching a movie in May of 2020, the muse landed in my lap, presenting a new set of lyrics. I went to the piano, a cumbersome tool for me that was also limited by this finger issue. Now with a need to record at least a rough sketch of this new and forming song. I proceeded to do that very thing, it was difficult but possible, and I did it successfully, with the Old Cowpuncher’s Song being invented.
It was near this same time when listening to an old Muddy Waters interview that I found what he termed as the "Spanish" method of tuning a guitar, one of many open tunings that are used to facilitate playing with a slide. This seemed a novel concept. I have a very old parlor guitar, having a non-radius, flat fretboard. Thinking I should give this a try, I did. Within minutes I was playing and singing an old John Prine song, followed by yet another, and so on. Wow, over-joyed at the finding, playing music again, smiling face wide. Quickly however, I realized that this guitar was truly a poor candidate for this task. Soon there after the thought came of purchasing a dobro then tuning it with this same tuning scheme.
My march back toward playing had begun, a long journey had begun. A dobro arrived via a delivery truck one afternoon in June of 2020. Excitement found me opening the container, then the case, to view this instrument for the first time. After looking it over, and doing some further research as to properly tuning it in the recommended, normal dobro tuning, I did so. That was a standard G tuning which I had dabbled with on occasion with guitars. It was to me the same thing, a condition I preferred to avoid for guitars because of the limited flexibility toward my own musical preferences. I then tried tuning it as Muddy had done with his guitar as stated in that interview. With the dobro, this tuning worked but was less than satisfactory. The string gauge of the 6th string was inadequate to hold a D1. The string buzzed and rattled. Without a will to go out into public, or local stores, in the pandemic, and truly without a local vendor having access to custom strings like this. I then tried tuning with this same scheme one step higher finding a similar condition, and found I was unable to fulfill this previous hope. From there however, I did learn using finger picks and using my right hand with them, learning various picking patterns that I still use with guitar.
By July 2, 2020, I had pretty much concluded that there was little hope of a normal return to playing music, yet my own curiosity kept me looking at Craig’s List postings of musical instruments, when I saw what eventually altered the growing non-musical way that I was enduring at that time. There was posted a beautiful 1973 Martin D-35. Beautiful to look at in the least, and the price seemed reasonable to an extreme. On impulse, I wrote the owner, making arrangement to see it the following day, at which time I purchased the instrument. By the last week of August I got the instrument back from my luthier having some rather minor fixes performed. It was the days following having this instrument that I concluded to really learn to play with three fingers.
The injured index finger knew its place having been an integral part of playing all these years. Where it retained the ability to form the bar for bar chords, that was the limit of its functionality in playing a guitar. That last digit’s joint was by now regaining a slight percentage of its flexibility, yet retained its pain sensory nerves when engaged even a little bit. It seemed as though there was a club on my hand when attempting to play with that finger sticking out by itself, actually in the way. With these limiting conditions I began to play again, gradually, fighting it all the way. The brain knows how to position the hand for playing chords, but one way, with the index finger. It became a conscious task to remove the reflex behavior of muscle memory, filled with countless errors and countless alarming halts from excruciating pain from the automatic engagement of the index finger when attempting to play songs known well for years. So shocking it was that in mid stream of a song, the yikes sensation would be so strong as to fully wipe the memories ability to cognate where in a song the previous moment had been, causing a complete destruction of musical flow, dead stop. This reoccurring condition caused deep frustration at times, but that will to play music again would overcome. There were many occasions when these instances caused my putting the instrument down, with a sense of hopelessness sweeping over me. Yet I stayed with it, near daily, practicing, gaining, practicing, learning new ways to form chords, that I could no longer play with the same shapes used for decades. I gained enough that I found a return to recording possible. It remained that there were many limits to playing with a club finger on my hand, some of my songs were fully off limits. Still I was again playing music and somewhat back into a creative space.
The healing continued through this long period. I noticed that I could again place my finger tip on the fretboard, limited to the lower register strings only. Doing so however caused a degree of inflammation in the finger disallowing its use in that way for days. Eventually I recognized that recovery was increasing. I’d use the finger on the three lower register strings in a session, to awaken the following day with it being really stiff, and at night achy. By paying attention to these results, if I were to limit my use of the finger to use, upon occasion, maintaining minimal total use, I noticed further improvement and less ache afterward. This very slow process of very slow recovery continued through the summer of 2021 and into the fall, when I began stretching use to the higher register strings. At first just a little, then gradually increasing its use.
In December 2021, I could again use the index finger nearly the normal way. It would be stiff after and slow to react toward the many required placements demanded by play normally. I then found a reverse muscle memory issue happening. A lot of mental confusion in the brain, it would send signal to the wrong finger, having reached a degree of muscle memory in playing three fingered for more than a year. By early January I had recognized that normal play was again available. I consciously stopped playing in the three fingered way, to rebuild an old trusty method, realizing how fortunate I am that the finger, well the body can overcome. Being older means that recovery is much slower than when young, but it occurs none the less. The journey continues though. I still notice the mental confusion when playing through fast changes, playing lead phrases or simply performing quick chord changes. This journey is still continuing now. I still note some difficulties and some of those symptoms. I truly believe that I can fully recover, while paying strict attention to the symptoms, and reacting appropriately by giving it rest, and or not overdoing what my will wishes for, playing music. And the beat goes on….
