Hiya!
Remember how I broke my wrist ice-skating on NYE and was told I wouldn't play an instrument for at least 10 weeks?
Well, after 6,5 long weeks of wearing a heavy, uncomfortable (yet purple and pretty) cast that prevented me from doing any housework (thank God for my lovely wonderfully helpful friends!), and from wearing long sleeves tops, tying up my snow boots and closing my coat during one of the most snowy winters Newcastle has ever had since I moved here, they finally took the cast off a week and a half ago and I finally got to find out which ones of my long list of ever-changing NHS doctors were right about my recovery: the ones who said I'd be back to normal as soon as the cast would be off and recommended I'd play lots of ukulele as finger fitness exercise (whoohoo!), or the ones who banned me from playing any instruments for a couple more months and said it'd take me a whole year to be completely recovered (noooo!!!!).
Turns out... I couldn't move my wrist at all when they took the cast off. Major disappointment. Couple of tears. Physio exercises as prescription and an appointment booked for in a month's time. And that was it :-/
I'm doing my best to do all the exercises I was given and try to make my wrist more flexible. It's improving a bit everyday, but I'm still very stiff and in a lot of pain, even when I'm not moving it at all, and I'm still not able to hold a uke properly. Maybe just a C chord if I lean forward and angle the uke towards my hand. I'm still very bruised and my forearm has zero muscles left. There's a bump on the same side as my pinky finger (where the non-broken wrist bone went off the way), and when I touch it my pinky goes numb. Weird.
Drumming with that wrist is also out of the question, so I'm learning how to do drum-kit patterns one-handed (works pretty well actually, except maybe for paradiddles and jungle beats haha - not fast enough! ... which is annoying when you had just planned on reuniting with your beloved samba band, but hey). No stiltwalking for me this year though. Might try lindy-hopping wearing a wrist-guard on my left hand but I'm a bit scared.
After all the great advices I had gotten from you guys, I am now a music theory expert haha
I tried fingerpicking but my cast was scratching the finish on the uke's neck so I stopped.
Haven't tried playing my dulcimer again yet, I feel I've had enough disappointment for a while.
So yeah, stay tuned. More (hopefully positive) medical updates to come in a few weeks!
Meanwhile I've been keeping myself occupied by starting my own business, which is quite exciting, although it will soon very much require me to have full use of both my hands in order to do the work :-S Most of it is completely un-uke-related but there's some top secret project I've got going on that may or may not involve ukuleles but I tell you more about it I'll have to kill you
That's all for now folks!
(Below: me with my cast on right before they took it off, and me getting acupuncture to get rid of the pain and speed up the healing process.)
Remember how I broke my wrist ice-skating on NYE and was told I wouldn't play an instrument for at least 10 weeks?
Well, after 6,5 long weeks of wearing a heavy, uncomfortable (yet purple and pretty) cast that prevented me from doing any housework (thank God for my lovely wonderfully helpful friends!), and from wearing long sleeves tops, tying up my snow boots and closing my coat during one of the most snowy winters Newcastle has ever had since I moved here, they finally took the cast off a week and a half ago and I finally got to find out which ones of my long list of ever-changing NHS doctors were right about my recovery: the ones who said I'd be back to normal as soon as the cast would be off and recommended I'd play lots of ukulele as finger fitness exercise (whoohoo!), or the ones who banned me from playing any instruments for a couple more months and said it'd take me a whole year to be completely recovered (noooo!!!!).
Turns out... I couldn't move my wrist at all when they took the cast off. Major disappointment. Couple of tears. Physio exercises as prescription and an appointment booked for in a month's time. And that was it :-/
I'm doing my best to do all the exercises I was given and try to make my wrist more flexible. It's improving a bit everyday, but I'm still very stiff and in a lot of pain, even when I'm not moving it at all, and I'm still not able to hold a uke properly. Maybe just a C chord if I lean forward and angle the uke towards my hand. I'm still very bruised and my forearm has zero muscles left. There's a bump on the same side as my pinky finger (where the non-broken wrist bone went off the way), and when I touch it my pinky goes numb. Weird.
Drumming with that wrist is also out of the question, so I'm learning how to do drum-kit patterns one-handed (works pretty well actually, except maybe for paradiddles and jungle beats haha - not fast enough! ... which is annoying when you had just planned on reuniting with your beloved samba band, but hey). No stiltwalking for me this year though. Might try lindy-hopping wearing a wrist-guard on my left hand but I'm a bit scared.
After all the great advices I had gotten from you guys, I am now a music theory expert haha
I tried fingerpicking but my cast was scratching the finish on the uke's neck so I stopped.Haven't tried playing my dulcimer again yet, I feel I've had enough disappointment for a while.
So yeah, stay tuned. More (hopefully positive) medical updates to come in a few weeks!
Meanwhile I've been keeping myself occupied by starting my own business, which is quite exciting, although it will soon very much require me to have full use of both my hands in order to do the work :-S Most of it is completely un-uke-related but there's some top secret project I've got going on that may or may not involve ukuleles but I tell you more about it I'll have to kill you
That's all for now folks!
(Below: me with my cast on right before they took it off, and me getting acupuncture to get rid of the pain and speed up the healing process.)
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