I need some sympathy - very painful shoulder

Well, I’m up and posting at 2:40 am local time, and I’m not an insomniac, if that gives you any idea how my shoulder feels. :frowning: I don’t know what’s wrong with it - it just freakin’ hurts, no matter what position it’s in. I think I’ll be going to the doctor in a couple of hours. (Yes, typingis difficult, thanks for asking. :smiley: )

Sympathy is yours… had something similar myself. Mine turned out to be a trapped nerve, caused by typing too much on a small laptop keyboard. Mine was ultimately mostly sorted by changing my typing posture, using a full-size keyboard when possible, taking more breaks, and physiotherapy twice a month. Might be able to sort yours with a visit to physiotherapist who specialized in repetitve stress disorders… but once you’ve had it checked by a doc I’d recommend light exercise to help work it out.

Oh your poor thing. Nothing is worse than pain induced insomnia. Have you tried putting a warm compress on it?

I did the warm then cold thing today - it just got worse.

Trapped nerve, eh? I started mousing with my left hand because my right wrist was getting carpal tunnel - maybe I’ve been mousing with my left hand and arm too much.

Maybe you should shout yourself to a good massage.

I’d go see a doc first just to make certain, but a massage might help.

My husband had The Shoulder From Hell and it reduced him to tears (and a doctor visit). Then he went on MSM and glucosamine (he was dismissed with a diagnosis of arthritis, which I guess was accurate) and hasn’t complained since. I cannot believe the difference it made.

Once you see your doctor and rule out anything like pinched nerves or that sort of thing, you might want to give it a try. Feel better!

Okay, one 3:30 am visit to the emergency room later (I was trying to sleep sitting up, and I was just lying there crying and whimpering from the pain), I have a frozen shoulder. Sonofabitch this hurts. I already take glucosamine for my hips, I exercise regularly (weights and cardio) - why wouldn’t I get another extremely painful, chronic condition. Body, you are seriously letting me down.

Okay, that’s one bizarre sounding ailment. Please share (not the pain, thankuverymuch…just the details). It sounds like something anyone could get while minding their own business. :eek:

Apparently, I got it from being 40 and female. I’m going to physio soon, so maybe they can answer more of my questions. Like I said to my husband, I wish I knew what I did to make my shoulder hurt so badly, so I can never, ever do it again. My weakness is my joints all over my body, though - if anything will go on me, it’ll be a joint. The doctor said he also saw a little calcification in my shoulder joint - my hip problem is calcified tendonitis. Maybe I eat too much calcium. :confused:

The pain was stellar (as in, holy cow, look at that pain!). I was crying out loud and whimpering from it last night, and I don’t have a bad tolerance for pain. It felt like nothing as much as when someone grabs your arm and yanks it behind your back and holds it too high, so it feels like the joint is about to break, and it increased from a mild problem in the morning to a mid-night emergency room visit in one day. There was no comfortable position; neutral positions hurt like a bastard, and active positions hurt like more bastards. The doctor said I’ll need to do range of motion exercises - that sounds like…fun.

I would look seriously at RSI as the cause. I got my ‘frozen shoulder’ (aka trapped nerve under a spasming muscle) the same way - I exercise, weights and cardio. The physio said it was from holding my left arm in the wrong position for far too long typing on a small laptop keyboard, which unfortunately I must do for my job. Not much I can do to permanently fix it, but it hurts a lot less when I exercise (lightly), or when I visit the physio.

So sorry you got what I got, but it does get a bit better.

There’s drugs, right? You’re doing prescription pain meds, right?

My shoulder hurts too, but mine was self-inflicted. I was demonstrating some soccer keeper techniques to my kid and landed on it wrong. So wrong that I thought I had broken something and went to get x-rays. Nothing broken but it still hurts like hell. Luckily the doc thought vicodin would help. Sure enough.

The tip of my left hand ring finger hurts. So does the tip of my left hand middle finger but not as badly.

Why do my fingers hurt? Because I was attempting to walk up stairs carrying a book, when I tripped and fell, scraping my knee and severely pinching my fingertips. The ring fingertip is noticably purple–but only in the right light. (So far, anyway. It was this morning I fell.)

featherlou,

Good thoughts coming your way. I hope that you’re feeling better by now. And by the time you see your physiotherapist, you get the whole thing figured out. I’m sorry that you’re going through this.

You’re one of my favorite posters so I hope this isn’t going to slow down your posting. But if resting would help, please take care.

It’s totally slowing down my posting - I can’t type nearly as fast. :smiley:

I got an anti-inflammatory for the inflammation and pain, but it doesn’t seem to be doing much for the pain. I’m thinking about going back to a doctor and requesting some SERIOUS pain medication - the kind that I can take before bed and be knocked out for eight hours. I’m piggy-backing Tylenol on the anti-inflammatory (ibuprofen) to just stay sane. I have a feeling that the doctors classify this type of injury as “discomfort.” I got your discomfort right here, buddy - let me just grab your jubblies and give 'em a good, hard squeeze, and tell me if that discomforts you.

So, I can expect to be in the frozen stage for four to nine months (assuming I have left the Freezing stage already, which I think I have since my shoulder is all but completely immobile). It is “marked by the slow improvement in pain.” Damn. I have never had this much ongoing pain in my life. My arm swung backyards yesterday as I was getting in bed, and I thought I would pass out. I lay in bed and convulsed and cried and moaned with the shock of the pain. Imagine your arm slowly breaking, and you can’t do anything to alleviate the feeling of your arm slowly breaking. That’s what it feels like. I think I have to concentrate on the “slowly improving” part, because the “four to nine months” part is not making me happy.

And that’s just the pain. The other part of this is having my life turned upside down. I was ready to go back to work, but that’s out now. We’re going on vacation in May - I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I won’t be in agonizing pain every day of our trip. I’m trying to start a new business - designing. I guess I’ll need to learn how to draw using one arm only. Putting my bra on just about makes me pass out. Everything I do is affected by either the pain or the loss of mobility or both. This is freakin’ debilitating. It will most likely be temporary, so I can look at the positive of that - other people lose their arms permanently, or have conditions like MS or lupus that have no cure. I will work on feeling lucky, but I’m not there yet.

Wowzers. That sounds… thoroughly unpleasant.

I googled “frozen shoulder” and it sounded like the freezing stage typically takes some time rather than being an overnight process, did they have any comment on the rapidity with which your case hit?

{{{Featherlou}}} (but gently, gently!!!)

I noticed my shoulder was hurting when we went away for the weekend in February, but I thought I had just overdone some weight lifting. I guess it was starting then. If that was the start, it was no different than any other muscle strain type pain. Thinking back, I don’t think my shoulder bounced back from that strain; it just seemed to ache a little bit quite often. At 40, though, you don’t think twice about small aches. I think I have gotten it diagnosed and onto physiotherapy very quickly, though, which sounds like it will speed recovery (all fingers and toes crossed).