This board has been a little slow the last few days, so I’ve been looking at my thumbnails. My right thumbnail has a ridge in it about midway between the tip and the base. You can feel it, you can see it, and I’m wondering if it’s a sign of a flute player - much like a guitar player’s calluses. The other possibility is that I hit my thumb with a hammer or while working on the car and have forgotten it, and it’s slowly growing out.
So, anyone care to check their right thumbs and see if supporting the flute has caused any anomalies? Henke, feel free to check your left thumb (this goes for the other lefties, too).
I hold it with the standard grip - at least it’s standard to me. My right thumb is one of the supports, so there is weight on the thumb pad which pushes down over the nail.
Maybe just a hammer incident if no one else has the same thing going.
I’ve had one of those ridges ever since I can remember. Long before I took up the flute. I have one on the left hand too, but it’s less pronounced.
Did you do any manual labor when you were young? One theory I heard was that these are more common among people who do a lot of lifting, especially if it involves gripping something. I did quite a bit of that when I was younger.
Jon - I’m force fed cheese and milk on a daily basis (I’m arried to a Minnesotan), so that’s not it.
Chas - I worked all sorts of manual labor jobs during high school and college, but none in years and I didn’t notice this until sometime within the past month.
I’m beginning to think it happened replacing the serpentine belt on my engine a few weeks back. I seem to recall a moment of intense pain, but I honestly can’t recall if it was my thumb or a finger.
Oh well, glad you’re all willing to look at your thumbnails for me…C&Fer’s rule!
Bless you both Peter and Mary! So it may well be the flute playing and how we three are holding the flute. I’m willing to bet that my left thumb isn’t getting one since it doesn’t support much needing to be free for the Bb key.
Got a bunion/callus/something on my left thumb pad just above the joint where it contacts the flute. It’d be a pain in the ass if it weren’t already in the thumb.
But you ought to see the bony bumps on my first thumb joints that have evolved over 35 years of this nonsense (RH much worse than left). My right thumb almost looks crooked!
i dont play simple system (yet) but i do have thumb problems. it took me a couple years to figure out why. a knuckle in my right thumb cracks and several times a year it hurts for days on end. its always tighter, and doesnt have the same mobility as my left thumb. i adjusted my finger position, so it hasnt acted up in a long time, but the damage is done.
