Chronic Hand injury from guitar playing?

In Early November 2020, deep into quarantine, I was playing acoustic guitar pretty aggressively. (I’m right handed to my fretting hand is the left hand.) Steel Acoustic guitar strings require more tension and strength to bend as you all know

I bent the low E string on the second fret of the guitar quite strongly. Immediately after doing that, I felt a quick, numb weak feeling in the center of my hand. I then stopped playing because that did not feel normal at all to me.

After a few days my hand still did not feel the same as before. There was a sensitive tingling feeling in my wrist and my hand felt weak in general. I went to a orthopedic doctor and they said it could be something like carpal tunnel or some nerve pinch, but they were not 100% certain. He gave me a brace, a paper of nerve gliding exercises, and sent me on my way

Because this was peak pandemic time, and the fact that I had a sleep disorder to where I was super exhausted all the time, had trouble staying focused and remembering things, and had bad discipline when it came to doing physical therapy exercises in general. All of these factors combined prevented me from doing these exercises regularly, so I wouldn’t have known if these exercises would have made a difference on my hands condition way back then.

Eventually things started to get much worse.

I would occasionally try to play guitar lightly to see if it got any better. But every time I tried playing guitar, the sensitive feeling in my wrist would get stronger, and my arm would start to sting and burn with pins and needles and it would be so discomforting that I had to stop. I began to feel stinging pins and needle feelings all over my left arm. Eventually, this hot sharp stinging pain spread to my shoulder and left side of my neck. It seems like the focused pressure that playing guitar did to my hand would aggregate whatever the problem inside the hand is and would create stinging and pins and needles through my arm.

I then went to a physical therapist, they could not specifically pinpoint the problem. I did some sessions but once again I did not follow up on any of the exercises, the problem remained. This whole time I only tried playing guitar lightly only about 3 times over the course of months.

(Eventually the sharp tingling in my wrist changed to a constant sharp sting in the center of my left hand that remains to this day)

Then the stinging feelings went down to my lower back, then a few months later the stinging pins and needles went to my forehead, then the top of my head. I went to a neurologist to get a nerve conduction study on my left hand and arm in July of 2021. In October a new neurologist read the results and said everything was fine, there was nothing wrong with the median nerve, and that the problem is not carpal tunnel syndrome. “My results were perfect”. I was baffled. Was this injury in my hand not a nerve injury after all? Or is the pins and needle stinging still nerves but just a side effect of the main problem ? Could it be the tendons in my hand causing this constant sting instead ?

Eventually. After playing guitar a bit more, the stinging feelings across my body magically went away (for the most part) or were so minimal that I could not detect it at all. It was pretty much a miracle! And a good 6 months went by to where I played lots of guitar pretty much without feeling that stinging feeling in my body for the most part, but the sharp sting in the hand was always there, but it did not bother me much.

Then in Early august this year I went to the gym with me friends and they wanted me to lift weights. So I did. I’ll admit that it was way over the amount I should have tried to lift because I don’t have much upper body strength. I guess I put too much pressure on my hand and it restarted the problem all over again. Then the stinging all over my body returned whenever I would play guitar.

Eventually, I attempted to play guitar once every 2 weeks or so. After I tried doing that one time about a month ago, my penis began to have a dull sore pain the next day, a feeling I’ve never had in my penis before (this happened again to my penis but Less intense the last time I tried playing)

After the last time I played (which was for 5 minutes about a week ago) I’ve had the worst constipation I’ve had in my life, and I still have it now

I’m also going to take another indefinite hiatus from guitar playing until I figure out what’s going on.

Now, with the constant sharp sting in the center of my left hand, the stinging pins and needles feeling has spread all over my body. I don’t know if it’s neuropathy or something else. It’s been years and I still have no idea what the problem in my hand is that’s been causing all of this body-wide stinging.

None of the doctors I’ve been to can seem to figure out what the problem is and I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m going to get an MRI on my hand soon for the first time to see what’s going on internally

My theory is that whatever injury that happened in my left hand, whenever I play guitar, type on a computer, squeeze things, lift or push up heavy things, or do anything that puts a lot of pressure on the center of my left hand, creates the stinging and pins and needles and body weakness. Could it be a chronically inflamed tendon? Tendinitis or tendinosos? What do you all think??

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