I’m a musician and I’m currently living with what I feared the most, a musician injury.
The accident
October 21st, 2019, I’m playing dek hockey (outside rink, with a ball, no ice), I play every Monday and Thursday in two different leagues. The one on Monday is competitive, and we’re playing an aggressive team, these games are always intense.
Midway through the game, I get near the boards with an opponent, fighting for the ball. Suddenly my right-hand hurts, I’m dropping my stick, I run to the bench for a replacement. I’m sitting there, hurting, I haven’t felt so much pain in a long time. I have no clue how it happened, my feeling is as if my middle finger was pushed inside.
I didn’t play for the rest of the game, I couldn’t even hold my stick. Later I got home and put some ice, foolishly thinking it would get better tomorrow. But it didn’t, two days later, thanks to a 21 hours trip to the hospital, the verdict had fallen, a metacarpal fracture on my right hand.
Dealing with a musician injury
Strangely enough, I had lost my ‘day’ job a few weeks prior to the injury, I’m also a web programmer, so it didn’t affect my situation at work, but I had some gigs in October.
I’m currently playing with two bands, and another one just starting. In my first band Eureka, a rock cover band, we are a two-guitars affair, so the gigs could be done without me. But I’m the only guitarist in my other band, an 80’s tribute named 80’s Night Band, and we had a gig in a bar on November 30th, so there was an issue there.
Again, foolishly, I thought that after five weeks my fracture would have healed, so I didn’t cancel. I just notified the three bands I’m involved with about my situation, which got me out of the starting band momentarily, but that’s another story.
So for the first two or three weeks, I didn’t do anything with music, my hand was still very sensitive, I even had trouble tying my shoes or opening a bag of salad. But I still could think, and the whole idea of Music Muncher, the blog and the YouTube channel, came from all this time thinking.
Are you going to gig with a cast?
So days went by, I felt better, not as sensitive, but the radiographs I was seeing every two weeks were not really encouraging. One week before the November 30th show we had a band practice scheduled with the 80’s tribute. By then I had tried playing a little, I could grab a pick and make a few notes.
I went to the band practice, it was nice seeing all the band members, it’s easy to get depressed when you can’t do anything you’re used to. The playing wasn’t so bad, to my surprise, but I had a hard time keeping the pick between my fingers, it was always slipping. Also with the cast on my whole hand, I couldn’t do palm-muting (a guitar technique), but the repertoire didn’t require a lot.
The Wednesday between the practice and the show I had another appointment at the hospital. I was hoping to have the cast removed, but it wasn’t ready yet. So when I got home I sent a message to my band about it, they suggested to report the show, they feared I would worsen my injury if I tried playing, to which I agreed because it was logical. But the bar owner wasn’t too pleased, with only a few days before the show. So there was only an option left, play the gig with the cast.
Yes, I’m going to gig with a cast…
So there was no turning back at this point. While preparing for the gig, I noticed that my thumb was moving really well, I remembered seeing country players having picks fixed to their fingers, I thought I could use that technique. I went to the music store and bought one of those thumb picks, it worked pretty well, with only a few limitations.
With this setup, the only things I couldn’t do were palm-muting, tapping, and fast alternate picking. Since I wasn’t playing a shredder repertoire, that gave me a chance, but I had a few solos by Mr. Eddie Van Halen, Jump and MJ’s Beat it, and a few other tricky leads, Bon Jovi, Michael Sembello, but I figured that in my visible situation, the crowd would be receptive to me not being dead on.
So the gig was finally about to happen, the soundcheck went well, I had a lot of help from my bandmates, just plugging the jack to my guitar was complicated. The first song was Summer of 69, I had to modify the intro, it starts with palm-muting, but it’s an easy song, that gave me confidence.
We went through the setlist, people were dancing so it was sounding ok, I could relax and try to enjoy, despite my condition. In the end, we didn’t do an encore, I was tired and one singer was sick also, my hand was ok, only a little pain in my wrist. Overall, in that situation, it was a success, I was just happy it was done.
A musician injury isn’t the end of the world
So as I’m writing these lines, I’m still with my broken hand, my next appointment for it is in almost a month, so I’m not close to being fully healed. But I could focus on other things, like this blog, YouTube, writing music, tutorials. I’m lucky to have people around me to help with other things, cooking, cutting my nails, tying my shoes. I’d lie if I said that I wasn’t tired of being in this situation, but it isn’t so bad, life goes on even with a musician injury.
