The Dartitis Diagnosis

So Doctor what is it?

Writers cramp! Can you believe that? It’s (expletive deleted) writers cramp!

How the hell can it be writers cramp if I’m not writing?
Well it seems that writers cramp is simply the common name for another condition called focal dystonia, you might want to see my ‘What is dartitis?‘ page for further details on this.

Anyway contrary to what you may think the name implies it does not involve actual muscle cramp. It does however involve effecting fine motor control in tasks requiring repeated contractions. (Like playing Darts to pick an example completely at random.)

OK so now we know what we are dealing with. Plenty of research now occurs to learn more about dystonia and what can be done about it.

Next time I will write about what can be done about it according to the on line resources on the matter.

Keep on keeping on

Well my game just got worse and worse. Occasionally I would think that I was getting something of a reprieve. New darts, new grip or simply hard work on the practice board trying to be accurate in spite of everything.

Nothing worked, couldn’t budge the bugger!

I did as much research on the subject as I could. Everyone seemed to be saying the same thing, that it was just one of those things that effected players of all levels, came on for no obvious reason and people guessing that dartitis is some kind of psychological problem.

Great explanation “it’s unexplainable”!

One curious thing about all these supposed “explanations” is that they all came from people who seemed to be talking off the top of their heads. I couldn’t find a single one that came from a doctor, let alone one from a Psychologist or a Neurologist.

You can see how people might think that it is specific to Darts when the only thing effected was their darts playing and not any other action. I wonder however how many people who suffer ‘dartitis’ have actually sought medical opinion or intervention due to the condition.

I did seek medical help and what I learned was interesting, informative and frankly depressing.

Thinking back on it

You know thinking back on it – maybe it didn’t come on so suddenly after all.

I remember times without count that I have had to adjust my grip a little, sometimes admittedly because I was changing darts or trying to find something new that worked just that little bit better for me. Sometimes however it was because I was having some little difficulty with my grip, holding the dart too tightly, occasionally I would find a non gripping finger behaving oddly or moving without my volition. In fact I had probably been playing with an ever changing grip for quite some time. The results however were still there. I was scoring heavily and checking out well.

Weather this was the root of my problems developing is not a question that I can give a solid answer on. I cannot help thinking however when I asses the nature of the problems that this was probably the beginning of the trouble and that the changes that I made to my grip and the fact that I, to a certain extent got used to playing with the tension in my grip were in fact stop gap measures that allowed me for a time to put off the full awful problem that I have to deal with now.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and with it we can see beginnings of problems that we would not have guessed at at the time. But what would I have done if I had known then what was coming? Unfortunatley I do not think there is anything that I could have done. Shame, but that’s life.