Driving for Dollars

I’m assuming everyone else is also noticing those little aches and pains creeping in and then flitting away again as we get older. Are those really just starting to happen or am I noticing them because I’m paranoid? I’ve seen too many wonderful musicians bite the dust in the past few years. Is that little twinge I felt in my elbow / shoulder / embouchure / wrist nothing or could it be my downfall, my reason to find another career? Yeesh. Since I don’t have a job with its own disability assistance program, I worry about permanent damage a lot. Ironically, I think a busy freelance lifestyle is more likely to contribute to disability issues than a larger orchestral job where there’s a LITTLE bit of a safety net.

I got rear-ended in October, so I’ve had a very small taste of what injury can mean. I was never unable to play—it just hurt! Now that I’ve been through a bunch of physical therapy (which, by the way, is yet another thing you have to cram into your schedule should you need it), I am OK most of the time, but when I have to do a lot of driving, it gets painful again. This is also hard on my husband, since he’s doing more of the driving when we carpool. We used to switch off, but now he’s routinely making the entire drive to Fresno when we have a set there. I wish that, in addition to decent health insurance, we had a good disability plan. If I had more of a cushion to miss work, it would have sped my healing time and probably made it more complete. I’m managing, but I wonder if I would be in a better place if I hadn’t had to work through the injury.