The past few weeks it has been going on and off. I made a doctors appointment about a month ago and he said it might be tendonitis. he said it might be arthritis but id probably be too young. So i stopped and it got better for about 2 weeks. the problem is..It came back. And it's weird because I can do pretty much anything but play piano i start to feel it there. Its not awful pain and i can still play but its there and i dont want it to get worse.. Whenever i do anything else I'm fine. any advice would be great. I just started trying to get my bachelors in piano performance so its really coming at a bad time..what do you think it is? i circled it in the picture.

Go to an orthopedic surgeon that specializes in hands.

i really cant afford to keep going. I went to one last time

That part of the hand can be affected by the lateral, or sideways angle, of your wrists. Adjust your bench, experiment with your hands at different angles both laterally and vertically. I had a similar problem when I began that was fixed by technique/posture.

ooo interesting ill have to try that thanks

That area is also involved in controlling the thumb. Don't strain your thumb - take it easy.

Are you sure it's not further back behind the wrist? Otherwise I would concur with david, could well be how you use your thumb. Poor thumb use leading to injury is not uncommon.

Do you study with a piano teacher, or are you self-taught?

Over-the-counter NSAIDS (like ibuprofen, aspirin, naproxen sodium; not tylenol) can help with the pain and also are somewhat anti-inflammatory. It can also help to ice the area two or three times a day for about fifteen minutes, with the ice pack wrapped in a few thicknesses of handkerchief. That helps both pain and inflammation; it's some trouble but it does work.

The other posts about seat height, sitting posture, and the angle of your wrists may help address the underlying problem. But cutting way down on the activity that's causing the pain is going to be necessary too.

If you're in school, the instructors may have advice. The problem is very common. I can't say any more than your doctor: it might be tendonitis, but if that's what it is, it means that the tendons and the processes through which they travel, as they connect the finger bones to the muscles in the forearm, have inflammation or irritation, and that is making the area painful. They are not very forgiving, and healing the injury takes time. It can heal up--- or it can get a lot worse.

If you can't clear it up on your own, the doc may prescribe physical therapy or possibly steroid shots in the hand, to put the breaks on the runaway inflammation. It's certainly better to try it the easy way. Good luck with it!

Have you talked to your piano teacher about this? You mention you are majoring in piano performance, so you need to let your teacher know about this. Sometimes if you draw their attention to it they can offer you some solutions. It is most likely a technical issue that can be resolved with some of the suggestions before.

I will relay the advice given to me by my teacher (and also given by many in this forum, but not mentioned in this thread yet). You should never feel pain while playing, unless you suffer from a chronic condition (in which case a career in performance is pretty much out of the question anyway). The very instant you start to feel pain, stop immediately. Observe your finger/wrist/forearm at that moment, and look for any awkward positioning. Go back a few measures and replay the passage slowly, trying to identify exactly where it starts to hurt.

As an example, I was recently experiencing some left hand pain, in a similar region to where you indicate, while working on a parallel chromatic octave passage in Liszt's Transcendental Etude 11. Going back through it slowly, I realized that, in moving from white to black keys, I was only rotating my hand (to move up my thumb, and the fourth finger is already nearly in place) and not moving my forearm. This resulted in poor alignment, and eventually pain. In this case, I suppose my brain subconsciously worked out that this was the most economical movement.

I will agree that NSAID's can help. HOWEVER, since they dull your pain, you can injure yourself more easily while using them. So if it hurts bad enough for drugs, then take the drugs, AND don't touch the piano again until the painkiller effect has worn off, say six hours later, or the next day.

If you don't stay healthy you'll fail for sure. Pain means you're doing it seriously wrong. Always. No exceptions. Getting tired is a different thing.