How Arthritis Stole My Passion of 17 Years

A few days ago, my Dad found an old CD buried in our home and sent me a series of files with music I hadn’t heard in 13 years. Despite all that time, the glassy notes, arpeggios, and dynamics were still fresh in my mind. I breathed along with the musician and anticipated her pauses. After all, the musician was me at age 17, recording three songs for a college audition. <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/gd7e5yh2prtehc0w78zc1/1-Vers-la-Source-Dans-le-Bois-M-Tournier.aiff?rlkey=8maaw8g17pvm7n80ir0o3aylj&dl=0" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Here</a> is one of my favorite songs from that recording. The recording captures a special moment in my life when I could play notes as delicate as lace with unbelievable speed. When I dreamed of being a harpist and seeing how much further and deeper I could go in my playing. It was before I knew that my bouts of tendonitis would keep coming back or that they were warning signs of chronic inflammation. I didn’t know that at 18, my wrists would get stiffer and I would have to give up playing tennis; at 22 the symptoms would creep into my fingers; and at 25, I would wake up with severe pain from arthritis and have to come to terms with the fact that I couldn’t play harp at all. <a href="https://critelli2.medium.com/how-arthritis-stole-my-passion-of-17-years-892a07ea45dd">Click Here</a>