Ain't she purty?

Tom Bombadil wrote:Yikes about that thumb Rags, hope you mend well and fast. Truly a shame about that bike ride, bet the scenery would have been fantastic at times.

Tom Bombadil wrote:Next year Chuck, next year. Sometimes a person needs to put things off for a year. Jen and I spend at least two weeks in Maui every other year. This year was supposed to be it. We always try to be there during the last weeks of Feb through the first week or so of March so as to see the baby Humpbacks and their mothers close to shore. Our first grandchild's due date was Feb 22nd. So Maui will be next year instead. Not quite the same thing but sort of.

Hey Rags, how about if you just ride no handed?

ragtime man wrote:

Tom Bombadil wrote:Hey Rags, nice to read/hear you again. Never heard of trigger thumb. What is it and how do/did you get it? Hope you heal soon.

TB aka FP

HI FP or TB now. Somehow TB sounds like something people often got back in 1930s and 40s but what do I know.

Trigger thumb is like trigger finger but the thumb of course. I was playing my ragtime stuff and acoustic blues for about 1 to 2 hours a day and then late at night after my wife went to bed I was practicing this thumb roll over and over for between 1 to 1 1/2 hours straight. I did this for about a week and a half or two weeks. Then I woke up one day and I couldn't straighten my thumb without a lot of pain and without it snapping two times as I tried to open or close the thumb.

Tried the usual meds and splinting it and didn't work. Went to dr. and he said he needed to send me to a hand specialist. He has now put two different shots into the thumb and they do not seem to be working. So if it doesn't improve in the next 4 to 6 weeks I will need to have hand surgery to relieve the tendon and the shieth that the tendon is getting caught on. The hand surgeon I think wanted to operate on it now but I said no thanks I will try another shot to see if that works. I can't play guitar much as I am in to much pain but the hand surgeon told me I could try to play if I wanted to as it wasn't going to hurt it anymore. However, when I took hs advice and tried using right thumb it would snap more and then there was more pain.

So I am frustrated as I want to play becasue I figure I am loosing a lot of what I could play, been about 9 weeks now, but don't want to risk making it worse and as I said I am hoping to avoid the surgery. I understand the surgery is done as an outpatient but then there is the additional healing.

It is a bummer also as I was training for the bike ride from Seattle to Portland (STP run in one or two days) and I was working up to being able to ride my bike to do the run in 2 days making it two 100 mile rides each day. There are 10,000 bike rider and then they close it off. There are over 8000 bicyclers already signed up. The ride starts at the U of Washington and ends up at a park next to a college in Portland. Schools open there doors and you can sleep, for a fee, inside the school buildings and they also, for a fee, provide a dinner and a breakfast. The bike ride starts at 4:15 AM for the folks that are going to ride it in one day. I know a couple of peope who do it each year in one day. One averages 18 miles per hours and the other averages 20 miles per hour and that includes food stops, water stops and the opisite of that process shall we say. The two day ride starts at 5:15AM.

I was hoping to average 10 to 12 mph and do 100 to 134 miles the day and the either 100 to about 80 miles the second day. At this point I can not ride my bike at all as my right thumb hurts to much to rap it around the handlebar or to change hand positions so I can shift gears and grab the brakes.

So now you know more than what you wanted to know trigger thumb. Best I can tell you is don't practice any one thing over and over and over and over and over and over etc. You get the idea.
ragtime man