Professional Musician Tells Her Carpal Tunnel Journey

Watch the Video of Diane telling her Carpal Tunnel Journey by clicking on the arrow below

I tried everything out there. I made myself a list because I can’t remember all of what I tried.  Every brace on the market, every cream, dozens of doctors, physical therapy – a few times – once with a hand specialist who actually reinjured me giving me inappropriate exercises.

I had one physical therapist that made a mummy type brace for me that went from the hand all the way up to the shoulder. I had to sleep with it every night, so that I wouldn’t bend my wrist or my elbow.  I found that with all the braces my muscles just atrophied, and things got worse and the pain got worse and the function got worse.

I got to where I did tons of acupuncture.  I even ended up with chiropractic and I went every route.   I had a million very painful nerve conduction studies. I ended up at USC with a hand specialist, one of the top hand specialists in the country who said within five minutes of looking at my nerve conduction studies, you have to have hand surgery, and by the way, I do this all the time for concert pianists here, I have their phone numbers call them, we’re just going to reroute your Ulnar nerve and we are going to take your nerve and put it on the outside of the elbow where  it’s not at all protected and by the way we’ll just get those carpal tunnel out of the way like that at the same time. So, I knew better.

My father had had a carpal tunnel surgery on both wrists. And I would ask him repeatedly at different intervals after his surgery -are you feeling any improvement? And he said no, that was after six weeks, six months? Six years? Sixteen years later, he might as well not have done it and he had reduced functions in his hands as well and he was still had pain. So I was kind of out of options and I kept from time to time looking around on the Internet, I mean things had gotten so bad that I was dropping things. I couldn’t button my clothes. I was very clumsy, I was telling you guys earlier like. I couldn’t play something like this musical piece.

I didn’t have the articulation, the facility, or the control. My fingers just felt clumsy all the time, so my playing the piano would come out moosh. I couldn’t articulate in there and, of course, this affected my work. Needless to say, I couldn’t work for a while. I couldn’t even turn on the hand signaler on my car.  It was just too painful.
Driving made it worse, working on the computer made it worse, playing piano, or electric bass, which I also used to tour extensionally which made it worse.

So, I was kind of between a rock and hard place and about that time surfing the internet I came across totally by fluky chance:  Mycarpaltunnel.com.  because I was hoping, you know, there’s more treatments maybe that have come out or whatever, and it looked pretty strange to me.

There was this tapey thing you just put it on in your sleep and the claims are a cure and I’m going yeah.

But then I saw that it was developed by a physician so started taking a closer look at it and to the point where I looked at the price and it was pretty impressive how cheap The Carpal Solution is, relative to the thousands of dollars I spent to get worse with other treatments that did not work.

So, I tried the Carpal Solution out and for six weeks.  I wore it every single night for 2 weeks and then every other night for 6 weeks, like they recommend, and I noticed a definite improvement.

My case is a little retractable, I had spent twenty years with this problem, so I think I probably took a little longer than the average bear, but my improvement was steady. So, after six weeks I was able to taper off and not use it every night.

But I used it for the next six months, at least three nights a week and then, after that all this time remember I’m resuming function, I’m working hard so I’m playing more and more and more I mean you know when you sit twelve hours a day you don’t realize -wow I couldn’t do that last year, you know what I mean so at this point, I’ve been using them for three years now know, plus, you know the Insurance pays, for it so it’s virtually free.

It’s been literally, the difference between me working or not working and for a musician that’s more than just money. That’s your life, so that’s who you are and that’s what you’ve invested everything and so now I’m at the point when I did a chamber workshop last summer I couldn’t have done without this because I just wouldn’t have had the facility or the stamina. You know, I mean the pain, I couldn’t sleep when I had that pain.

And so, if I have a heavy day of playing like a twelve hour day, I will still use them at night just to make sure I don’t have pain in the morning. You know, but the fact that it’s not only helped the symptoms, but it’s allowed me to go beyond where I was, because now I can approach more challenging musical material.

I talked to Karen for a long time because I was still skeptical and she explained to me the way that it works, which, of course I had to know, well maybe let me show you. This is just for the right hand.

When you get those things in the mail you get– I love this because I’m kind of retarded, sometimes they have the right hand, ones, for the right hand, and then, for the left one’s a picture of the left hand so that’s easy to figure out for me. They come in clumps

You got to de clump them which just means pulling them apart, This one’s for the right hand so this is just paper and adhesive and the middle part like a real light rubber and they tell you how to do this -you’re going to look to  see that this circle in the middle becomes an ellipsis.

So I asked her how this worked. So let me put this on here so I can tell you what she said so I just put it like that and pull back this tab – boom, take that off like that to fit same thing on this side.  And then this comes around here so you can see your first of all it’s real easy to customize it to your own hand.

And you’ve got tape and here’s the rubber thingy and you’ve got tape coming around, here, here, and here.

And what this does as she explained it to me, It gently  stretches here,  here and here in order to open the blood flow to the carpal tunnel itself. So, whenever anything gets more blood flow, it gets more nutrients. That means the body can heal itself.

So what I noticed almost immediately was the swelling that I had here in my wrist went down. This is really comfortable,  I mean you  don’t even know you have it on. In the morning by the way I have a special release technique, you just take this tab and boom they’re gone.

Now remember that, during that whole time, I’m still working, I’m still playing and as I get better, I’m playing more, because you know I can, because before I had to cut back a lot.

So I swear by this. I want you to know I’ve never done a testimonial before, and I would have pooh-poohed anybody who came to me for one and that’s largely because nothing ever really worked for me before.

But I was really happy, happy to do this, and I will do anything I can for this company because they’re the difference between me having a career and working and being able to do what I love and that’s an inestimable value.  And I tell people -I went to the post office the other day and the gal or the clerk had the braces on and I’m sitting there remembering that nightmare and how that just made me worse, and I just mentioned to her, “I’m going to help someone not suffer the way I suffered.  I’m going to tell her about it. So, I said, “Do you have carpal tunnel?” And she said, “Yeah”, I said,

“You know, I used to too, and right there you know most people can’t say, “I used to”, and I said, “Just check out this website www.MyCarpalTunnel.com because why would I want anybody to suffer it they don’t have to, and it’s that simple.”

It’s one of these things, that everybody said it would be too good to be true.

It is good, and it is true!

That fear has been replaced by hope and joy in being able to return to what I love to do.

Know that I’m for real!  Thanks so much.

Help yourself!

Diane,
Professional Musician, Pianist and Composer
Santa Monica, California