OH MY! I overdid it..... trying to rehearse without the guitar (!)

I was really enthusiastic to get started practicing my guitar again after a summer where goals were somewhat fluid and messing around became the new norm.  Orchestra rehearsals have started (with some really fun pieces - yes!),  I got a new piece to learn from my teacher (OK I said I didn't want to do any Bach, but apparently it's what I need to be doing so...  Bach it is).  And I went back to concentrating on those pesky slurs....   Maybe there was a little too much enthusiasm - but when my fretting arm started to hurt after practice,  I was thinking  - "it's just like when you start to work out muscles that have been idle - they stiffen up and hurt for a few days until they get used to the new regime".   However a few days later, my arm still didn't feel any better - in fact there was now pain around the elbow in addition to the forearm muscles.  Time to do a little research - i.e. probing around in the elbow region and checking out the internet.  Physical exam turned up a few quite tender spots where the muscles attach around the elbow - rats! the tendons are now involved in addition to the muscle.  Tennis elbow anyone?   Ignoring it is not an option - I am prone to tendinitis and I'm definitely smart enough to desist before I cause a chronic injury.  On the other hand I need to prepare for an orchestra performance coming up in 10 days... it's a quandary.   So my best bet is to get serious about rest  and anti-inflammatories.

The first thing I did was to stop playing the guitar.  Well strictly speaking I am still practicing small amount, but moving my left hand into the correct positions without pressing down, or sometimes just playing the right hand (this involves singing, which can be painful for everyone else, but I'm used to it!)  I'm hoping this will work because most of what I have to do with the orchestra pieces is familiarize myself with the music enough to know the timing and how to play the next part...  for sure I'll have to wait and see if this hands-off approach works though.  Next call up my trusty orthopedic physician and request an urgent appointment for a possible cortisone shot.  I guess they know me too well from when I was heavily into skating, so I get 'fitted in' next week.  In the meantime I dig out the ice pack and apply it on a regular basis and put myself on some anti-inflammatories.

Next problem - what to do about the scheduled 3 hour rehearsal this week?  That's surely not going to qualify as "rest" and I know if I take the guitar, my resolution about not playing will last about 5 minutes.   So I go to the rehearsal sans guitar.  It turns out to be quite useful - I found I could hear a whole lot more of what was going on when I wasn't concentrating on my own playing.  I got all the instructions, and importantly, so long as I followed along with the music, I was getting the same  auditory cues from the other parts that I would have if I was playing, so I don't think I missed out too much.

I came away with one additional piece of information - the 'castor oil' treatment. Huh? ... what's that, you might say - reportedly local application of castor oil and heat has an anti-inflammatory effect that can work wonders.  Being a veterinarian I would have thought I should have heard of this -  sounded like quack medicine to me.    Nevertheless after enthusiastic recommendation from our orchestra conductor I google it - and find that indeed, it not only has a long history of being used to reduce inflammation, the active ingredient is a known anti-inflammatory.  So I repair to the pharmacy for a hot pad and a bottle of castor oil and with my arm swathed in an oily rag and a voluminous heat pad I look a little odd... but do get lots of sympathy for the sore arm! So the sixty four thousand dollar question is,  is it working?  After only a few hours it's probably too early to tell, but after a couple of applications it seems to be helping.  Of course this could merely be the placebo effect - but as they have now demonstrated that the placebo effect usually involves actual physiological changes, I'll take it!  So if the rest doesn't work, maybe the castor oil.  And if not the castor oil, the cortisone shot will almost certainly fix it, at least for this episode. The question remains though, how to avoid this in future?  Will have to pay attention to "smarter" practice...