Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum OT - Trigger Thumb!

I have this feeling l won't be alone with this. Seen the Quack, got some pills, didn't work, consulted Google for the Quick Solution, boiled it, froze it, slapped stuff on it which made me smell very manly at least; finally used some foot spray on it.

All to little avail. The good news is, l can do most stuff without problems including the piano. Indeed, that has the best effect on it. Worst is the computer, followed by inactivity of any kind including sleeping; woe is me if l look at the computer, hence the tablet l've just bought. You can't record on a tablet, to my knowledge.

So. Any more quick solutions? . . suggestions?

Keep up the manly smelling stuff. (If you're a man, that is.)

Perhaps do some stretches throughout the day when you're not using it for piano? Here's a video that I think shows some stretches you can do (I have no idea if this works or not):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pndnd5dgumY

Ask (to be referred) for a steroid injection.

Which may or may not help. Sometimes only surgery will do the trick

This is what l didn't want to hear. . .l might have to face up to this like a man! Don't do too well at the dentist though. Specially when you get asked if you require anaesthetic in front o' this lovely attendant. . permission to swear, please

I used dictation software for the computer almost exclusively, back when I had RSI. Not sure if you can use it with a tablet, though. The Dragon software actually gets quite good at typing what you're saying, once you've trained it a bit.

I had a trigger thumb 25 years ago, from working in an orchard thinning apples. I had surgery, & it's been fine ever since - even the scar's disappeared. The surgery was done with a local anesthetic (if you can call having my arm frozen all the way to my ear "local"), & the incision was sewn up afterwards with just 3 stitches. I had a bit of adhesion of scar tissue afterwards, but a couple of physio visits took care of it.

Perhaps find a Taubman teacher via the Golandsky site:

http://www.golandskyinstitute.org/teachers/find_a_teacher_in_your_area

I had deQuervains 3 years ago, it took me about a year to fully recover, and when I was going back to normal a nurse messed up a blood donation and irritated the tendon again and had to go through the whole thing again, I stop playing the piano and playing video games and well, basically anything that had to use thumbs, I had an steroid injection and after that slowly recovered, I use the bracer thing that keeps your thumb still for sleeping to avoid reinjury.

I hope you have a good recovery, I tried to avoid the surgery option because on my research I found that most of the times it helps with the pain but it might weaken your hand, so it's always an option but I'm glad I could avoid it.

Thanks for the responses guys, it's been a help. Went to see the quack again y'day different guy, a Turk who was a dead ringer for Meatloaf, albeit a ad darker. Smashlng chap, advised the use of a restraint, thumb splint, as an option to try. Used the cardboard core of a roll of clingfilm for starters. Have made one from poly sheet used on model railways which enables full use on the piano and have had no thumb clicks since. A convenient solution, l hope?

Schumann here l come. .