Left shoulder. When i lift my left arm there is a sharp pain in the shoulder. Right at the point where upper arm meets shoulder. If i extend my arm straight out in front of me I can feel it but its not as sharp. When i extend it to the side, at about the half way point between being at my side and being parallel to the floor, the pain is the worst.
So you’re probably gonna say tendonitis or maybe you strained something doing yardwork etc. Thats what I thought too. In January. What in the world could i have done that there has been no improvement in over 6 months?
The rotator cuff tendons can get trapped under the bones of the shoulder. Certain movements pull on them more than others. But IANAD and if it’s been going on for 6 months you really should see one.
Just saw an orthopedic surgeon for the same diagnosis. My CT scan showed a tear in the rotator cuff of my left shoulder. I originally hurt it years ago at work. Received a cortisone shot in my shoulder and it feels great now. My health insurance says I need physical therapy for at least 6 months, my doctor said PT won’t do anything for something that is already damaged. He submitted a plan that includes surgery sometime around October. He has done thousands of surgeries on shoulders, he said the repair should last me a lifetime. I’m 65, not sure how long a life time is for me.
I once had a condition they called Frozen Shoulder or adhesive capsulitis, wherein I was not able to raise my arm above roughly horizontal in any direction (front or side). The “capsule” is a structure inside the shoulder, and as you can tell from the name it can become inflamed (“-itis”) and then sort of stick to some of the surrounding tissues, causing pain in movement.
I was given physical therapy for about 3 months, and it was gradually cured, and has stayed that way for at least 10 years. I never did know how it got started, but I was glad to get rid of it.
Based on my own experience I can imagine a couple of things:
Torn rotator cuff
Torn soft tissue (i.e., labrum)
Arthritis
You should see an orthopedist, who will definitely take X-rays and maybe order an MRI. Imaging will probably be necessary to get a solid diagnosis. Treatment could range from rest and medication (possibly cortisone) to physical therapy to surgery.
It sounds like there was no traumatic injury or a specific event where that you can associate with onset. Did you just wake up one day with this pain?
Same here. My shoulder was sore for a couple months and I assumed a rotator cuff tear. But the doc diagnosed adhesive encapsulitis. In my case it wasn’t a bad case- he just printed up some shoulder rehab info for me to work on at home and my shoulder eventually stopped hurting.
Frozen shoulder was my first thought as well. I’ve had it in both shoulders. As FinsToTheLeft indicates, it can be breathtakingly painful. It can also take six or more months to heal, apparently, although in my case I don’t think it lasted more than 2-3 months each time.
I was initially skeptical of the treatment I was given - some kind of electrical stimulation delivered through a wand that my PT pressed firmly into the affected tissue during weekly appointments. Turns out that this is indeed a totally legit and very effective treatment.
I had the frozen shoulder/adhesive capsulitis thing, too - in both shoulders at once! I hadn’t done any kind of hard physical work or athletic endeavor to bring on any pain, so I was stumped why I couldn’t raise my arm above horizontal in any direction except towards the front. And yes, if you forget and try to suddenly reach behind you, like to retrieve something from the back seat of the car, the pain can bring you to your knees. It didn’t come on overnight, but neither did it develop really slowly over the course of months. I’d say it came on over the course of a couple of weeks.
The doctor prescribed physical therapy, so I went through a few months of that and eventually the condition went away.
Same here. Sounds like OP may be the same thing. Lasts about a year if untreated. One guy told me that I could fix it by hanging from a highbar to ‘unlock’ the freeze. I said I’d rather wait it out. Hurt like a MF just to raise hand above shoulder.
Nothing much to add. You need to be examined by a doctor, and you need an MRI or other imaging to find out exactly what the problem is. If a doctor is hesitant to order an MRI right away for insurance reasons just push him on the requirements until he gets it done. They’ll do X-Rays right away that may reveal the problem to some extent, but in my experience of having every joint in my body beginning to go bad, except the ones that went bad already, you need an MRI to reveal the exact crucial details of the problem, and you need to do everything you can to fix it or expect it to get worse for the rest of your life.