thumb joint pain

[abram]

well I finally got in to see an orthopedic hand specialist for my thumb joint pain that has effectively stopped my mando playing for now, he gave me a "gamekeeper's thumb splint", told me to keep it on constantly for 8 weeks and then if that didn't work he said we'd start thinking about surgery. This is kind of discouraging for me, I had been working on my dobro skills and now I can't play a single thing, but I guess 8 weeks isn't THAT long, I just hope it works.
anybody else had a similar experience?

[John Flynn]

I am currently having the same problem. I just keep trying to lighten up on the thumb pressure, which has the added benefit of improving my playing, and I do the hand stretches on musicianshealth.com. Both seem to help and it has not gotten bad enough to see the hand doc yet.