all thumbs

I know, I know.  A few days went by and I didn't write; then it became more and more difficult to open my blog and write.  I would think "I should write that down" and didn't.  Days became weeks, maybe months.  So we'll see if I can make this again a daily habit.  Rather than fill in the blanks, I'll just go from here.  Normally I would be practicing my flute at this time (mid-afternoon), but I sprained my thumb in a minor skiing mishap, and want to wait another day before trying to play the flute again.  I had a premonition that I would injure a finger or fingers--something I never worried about until I started trying to learn the flute.  Playing is hard on my thumbs, anyway, especially the right thumb.  And especially since I bought my new flute, an Azumi 3000, on Feb. 21st (delivered to my house on Friday, Feb. 22).  It's an open-hole flute, which seems to be all they sell at the intermediate level.  And instead of gradually getting used to the open holes by removing the plugs one at a time, over several weeks, I took them all out right away and tried to play.  Took me about a week to get the hand of it, especially my right hand, but trouble with my right hand fingering became very apparent.  My index and middle fingers splay out away from each other, and my ring finger tends to roll to the side (towards the pinkie), when I try to play faster.  And I'm having trouble figuring out a natural placement for my right thumb, especially since it's curved, possibly as the result of arthritis.

To help train my right fingers, my teacher suggested that I place empty small creamer cups stuffed with cotton in between the fingers.  I've been doing that--although not on scales.  The creamer between the ring and pinky fingers kept falling out when I played scales, so I gave up on that. But I do use them for exercises as well as the short pieces I'm working on.  It does help, especially in keeping the ring finger from rolling out.  But it's difficult, and my in my fingers and up my lower arm ache.

But I haven't practiced in 10 days--8 because we were out of town; the last 2 because of the thumb strain.  I sprained it in a fall on Friday, the last day of skiing (got tangled with a snowboarder coming off the chair lift, and we both fell--I immediately felt pain in my left thumb).  I iced it and kept it elevated, and taped the thumb to the index finger to immobilize it.  So now my right thumb hurts a lot, because I was using it for all the activities that require an opposable thumb.  Lots of activities, as it turns out.  Zippers are especially difficult with just one opposable thumb available--and not the one that's used to taking the lead, since I'm left handed.

Somewhat ironically, I went to a James Galway concert yesterday and attended his master class today in D.C.  The master class did help reinforce to me how much of a beginner I am.  But he did recommend a book of scales/exercises--Moyse's Daily Exercises--that I'll take a look at.  I may wait to buy it until I finish my current exercise book--I'll see what Moyse looks like when I go to my lesson on Friday (in a music store).  I'll see what I can find out about it on Amazon.

Just looked at my thumb, which I now have in a thumb stabilizer (the 3M Futuro).  It works well--I can use the thumb, but it's protected from being bent back, which I think is what happened to cause the sprain.  The thumb is less swollen, but has a pretty big bump on the thumb knuckle.  I had one there already, probably arthritis, but now it's bigger.  I'm hoping that when I try to play tomorrow afternoon, the thumb will be healed enough that I won't make it worse.

I also have to see if I can do a downward facing dog--since I was planning to teach it as part of my Yoga for Seniors class tomorrow.  I may have to modify and do puppy--I'll use it as a teaching tool to show how one can modify a yoga pose due to injury and still get the benefits.