A moment that changed me: I was loving life as a cellist – then something snapped in my arm

As a teenager with a scholarship to a prestigious music school, I was looking forward to a future playing Dvořák, Shostakovich and Elgar. Then came the injury that shattered my dreams

When I was 15 I won a scholarship to study at Wells Cathedral school, a specialist music school in Somerset. I had wanted to be a cellist for as long as I could remember. I got up at 5am to play scales, practised at lunchtime and returned to my cello after lessons. I discovered the fireworks of Dvořák, the frenetic drive and nerviness of Shostakovich and the melancholy of Bloch. But above all I fell deeply in love with Elgar’s Cello Concerto.

One evening a year later, as I was preparing for a major competition, I pushed myself too far. I was playing a demanding study involving endless trills, working my weaker fourth and fifth fingers too hard, when something felt as if it snapped in my forearm, and I felt a burning pain between my wrist and elbow. When it hadn’t got better after a day or two I started to panic. Days became weeks. I still could not write or play. The school sent me to see specialists, but no one offered a conclusive diagnosis, or any treatment that proved effective.

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