About Me
My name is David Gardner. I am a British cellist now living in Brazil, South America currently undertaking my Ph.D. research looking into issues surrounding awareness, risk mitigation, and prevention of musicians' focal dystonia. In 2005, I was diagnosed with focal dystonia in my left hand during a particularly busy time in my career which completely turned my life upside down. I had never heard of focal dystonia before and felt completely in the dark about what to do or whom to turn to. Like many who are reading this today, I went looking for answers and so began my personal journey with focal dystonia. My retraining has been a very personal journey involving a lot of experimentation and research along the way. Some things have worked well, some haven't. There have been periods of almost total symptom remission and periods of struggle. Although in my case I have not been able to fully retain my playing abilities (many have), I have managed to maintain an active playing and teaching career, learning a lot about myself along the way. The dystonia has ended up being a positive influence in my life as well as a negative one. I am a better, more understanding person because of it. If I could give two pieces of advice they would be, don't suffer in silence, and believe in your ability to recover. It is not a life sentence, it is a bump in the road, persevere and embrace the journey.