Dear community,

I experience resistance in some finger movements after acute-tendinitis, like moving through water. It is mostly limiting my ability to play musical instruments.

~~Background:
I had acute tendinitis in my right wrist (RSI from excessive classical guitar play with bad technique / lacking warmup) in 2014. After a month of conservative therapy, I received physiotherapy. The acute inflammation subsided over a few months. Since then, I did many things to fully restore the areas, including Qigong/Taiji, manual therapy, osteopathy, ice bath therapy, dietary adjustments (anti-inflammatory), trigger point massage (forearm posterior, I only find triggers after I strain the area more than usual) and general mobility exercises. All those things help with reoccurring inflammatory issues, but only appear to be symptomatic.

~~Issue:

I maintain a susceptibility to get inflammation in that area when playing guitar or piano or working on PCs a lot, even though I improved ergonomics in all cases significantly. This relates specifically to ring finger movements and alternating movements between ring and middle finger, which lack precision, speed and accuracy and can cause pain if I keep it up for long sessions.

Symptoms from straining the area include:
- More resistance in related finger movements (but no restriction in range of motion),
- slight pain,

Persistent symptoms (even when not straining the area) include:
- Tendon snapping in the posterior sheath of the wrist - e.g. in Tai Chi movements I feel resistance of the tendon followed by a slight snap in some movements consistently which is closer to the traditional snapping finger issue (suspecting a bulge on the tendon in that area).
- Snapping also occurs in the right shoulder.
- a feel of "not enough space" in the wrist that I can alleviate by stretching the gap between wrist and forearm with my other hand ("making space"),
- unprecise ring finger movements (not really the traditional snapping from bulges at the ring band, it does not seem to be related to a specific part of the tendon), showing as a lack of consistent rhythm in guitar play finger picking.
- (probably unrelated) I experience mild tendon snapping in my left knee, e.g. during some tai chi movements. It was like that for a very long time

~~Self-diagnosis/observation:
From my understanding and observation, I suspect one of the following:
- thickened tendon from a long inflammatory period, causing excess friction in the sheath and limiting gliding capabilities.
- collagen-glued fascia tissue

As I already know and do the basic physiotherapy exercises and also do light calisthenics and Tai Chi, I am kind of stuck and would love to hear any suggestions how I can restore full gliding capabilities of my tendons.


I'd be happy about any ideas and directions. Available doctors seem to not go beyond conservative treatment, basic physiotherapy exercises and surgery. The former two were not sufficient and I'd like to avoid the latter.
Thank you for your time and knowledge!
Hannes

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