This happened to me a couple weeks ago. So far my reading suggests it will heal by itself, but could well take several weeks or months to happen; that going to a doctor won’t do any good in my situation, but that doing some exercises might help.
What are your experiences?
Thanks.
My experience is you need a diagnosis to know what to do about it. “Shoulder/arm injury from a fall” is not a diagnosis, it’s a complaint. Get diagnosed, then find out what the treatment is.
I fell a few years ago, and my back was having spasms that made it almost impossible to get up. I didn’t notice the shoulder pain until that was resolved. I ended up with a frozen shoulder, and had to go through a couple months of PT.
One problem with shoulder injuries is that there are a lot of muscles there and they need to work in sync for proper arm movement. The injury of some muscles will mean other muscles will take over to compensate. These other muscles get stronger while the injured muscle gets weaker. The muscles figure out a new way to move the arm, but that’s not always the same way as before. Physical therapy may be required to train the muscles to work properly once again after they heal. That happened to me once. I injured my shoulder blade and when the pain eventually went away, my shoulders were crooked when I lifted my arm. I had to do specialized PT to get the weakened muscles to wake up and start doing what they are supposed to.
Another issue is age. The older you are, the longer it will take to heal and the greater chance that there will be a residual issue of some kind.
If it’s still painful after a couple of weeks, it would be worthwhile to see an orthopedic doctor. They will be able to evaluate the injury and prescribe any physical therapy if needed.
My experience is that doing physical therapy wrong can make matters much worse. If you can afford to get a diagnosis and see a physical therapist to show you how to do whatever exercises might be helpful, i recommend you do that.
Exactly.
My shoulder/arm injury was from a bike fall, flipping over and landing on my back. Felt fine getting up until I tried to raise my arm and then yikes. Sprain of the acromial-clavicular ligament. 3 weeks later it was fine. No PT needed just time. Kids with the same fall tend to break the clavicle instead. Also usually gets better no matter what you do, as long as you don’t do what hurts.
Many rotator cuff strains also just need some rest. Some need PT. Very few need surgery.
Short version - giving it a few weeks like you did seems reasonable to me but if by a month out it’s not improving then you need an actual diagnosis and possibly PT.
Go see a sports medicine specialist if you have one nearby.
I broke my shoulder a few months back while running, and you are correct that nobody actually did anything other than take x-rays to make sure the pieces were all together, give me a sling, and tell me what to do to care for it–but that was important to healing. I started a PT program tailored to my injury a month after the incident and I was back to 98% after two months of PT.
There is still some lingering range-of-motion issues (e.g. scratching my back), but that apparently will take several months to get back to normal.
Don’t mess around–go see a proper shoulder specialist and put your worries at ease.
That describes my situation to a “T”
And I have GoPro video of the event. I can even see my outstretched shadow as I did my best Superman impression.
My mother stumbled on a loose carpet, caught her arm on a chair on the way down and chipped some bits of bone off inside her shoulder. Had minor but permanent pain and mobility issues.
Here to second QtM. Shoulders are complex joints and it is easy to make the injury worse without seeing to have done anything to it. Better to know what’s going on by getting it diagnosed and following specific instructions. That will shorten the healing time
I displaced my clavicle some 20 years ago (playing football, rock-hard ground, why yes it was a cup final since you ask, and no, we did not win).
Really painful for several days after but I never got it seen to. It is still displaced now and the tendon damage done back then is now giving me pain and mobility issues as I age. Some physio at the time would have made a big difference.
Get an X-ray.
Actually fairly unlikely to be helpful. Most shoulder injuries are not broken bones. Might be able to help regarding suspicion of AC separation. But most is soft tissue.
A good exam can be diagnostic a great portion of the time and minimally to decide if imaging is needed and if then what. If imaging is needed then they may just skip to an MRI (needed to be sure about labral tear or torn tendon).
Mine did. I dislocated my arm when I fell off my bike, but it relocated itself as I picked my bike up afterwards. That’s good, I thought; all I need to do is wait, and it will get better.
But it didn’t get better - I had torn a rotator cuff ligament, and I needed surgery.
It’s not even that we can’t diagnose you over the internet, you didn’t tell us how the injury happened or where it hurts or what you can/can’t do. It’s like posting that you tripped on the sidewalk and got hurt and looking for suggestions.
In any case, my unprofessional opinion is that you can probably ignore it for a little while and see if it resolves itself, but you’ll ultimately need a doctor to make a diagnoses and very possibly PT if the doctor doesn’t think it’ll heal up on it’s own.
When I hurt my shoulder, I tore some cartilage and had some impingement. Doc sent me to PT to see if it would help. What was interesting is that after a while I mentioned that some of the pain is resolved but this other pain is still there. What happened was that PT fixed the impingement*, but they still had to go in and fix the cartilage (and then months more PT after the surgery).
*and this is actually a great reason to see a doctor. I knew nothing about this kind of thing going into it. When I saw the first PT, I mentioned to him that my shoulder hurts when I do this [raises arm], so I’m constantly moving it up there, through the part where it hurts, in an attempt to keep it stretched/loose. What I didn’t know is that I was making it worse by doing that. When I moved it to that spot, I’m rubbing inflamed muscle (tendon?) against bone. That in turn makes it more inflamed which makes it bug me more. In effect, what I thought would help, was making things worse.
So, the PT not only fixed that but also got me to use my shoulder correctly again since my body was compensating for the injury and I was moving it all wonky which, again, just makes things worse.
Also, you might get lucky and a shot of cortisone will fix it, but again, you’d need a doc or probably even an orthopedic surgeon to do that.
Yup. Some do. And sometimes that gets decided upon early and more commonly after less aggressive interventions have not resolved the issue.
This definitely falls into Do Not try This at Home territory! 
Physiatrists (non-operative sports medicine docs) are also good choices.
I injured my shoulder in a fall in 1989. It still hurts sometimes. Get it checked out.