I have had shoulder pain for ~4 months. It’s relatively mild pain, but was starting to make everyday actions like putting on a jacket difficult, so I saw a physio (online).
She diagnosed it as a mild rotator cuff tear, gave me a set of exercises to do daily, and set an appointment for 5 weeks’ time to report back.
About 4 weeks in, and my shoulder is almost back to normal. The range of motion is much greater. I can put on a jacket pain free as long as I keep my shoulder blade down (and even that is close to not being necessary).
However, what actually happened, is that I found the physio exercises didn’t feel like anything, so first I added exercises for shoulder impingement, then as those ones felt like they were genuinely strengthening and stretching muscles more beneficial to the pain, I just switched to those ones entirely.
I’m feeling a bit bad about reporting back that I essentially went with a different diagnosis. And bear in mind I can’t know that the rotator exercises weren’t helpful (I kept them up for the first two weeks). Thoughts?
Just let her know in a “we’re in this together” kind of way. Tell the truth - as you went on you added a couple of other movements and they may have helped too perhaps? What does she think?
Ah of course; I can just say I tried multiple things and (genuinely) who knows what worked?
I guess I’m overthinking, it’s just my first inclination was to say the shoulder’s great, with no further details. But if it was the wrong diagnosis and/or the exercises aren’t great, I’d be perpetuating that.
they’re not infallible. I would mention it. I saw an orthopedic doctor for really bad pain in my knee. He thought it was bone impinging bone due to a prior ACL tear and associated damage. It was a good guess, but it turned out to be something completely unrelated, iliotibial band syndrome. My physical therapist figured it out and redirected me to treatment for that without the express knowledge of the ortho. I think she thought it was a bit subversive to do so, but it cleared up my excruciating pain in a couple weeks.
FWIW, when I had a shoulder injury (torn labrum), one of the things I mentioned to the PT is how it’s more painful when my arm is raised and, as such, I’d been purposely moving it through that area in an attempt to loosen it. He informed me that, on top to the torn labrum, I also had impingement and my ‘stretches’ were making things worse. While I still had to have surgery for the labrum, the PT made a world of difference with the impingement.
But, getting to something closer to the OP: For years (like, a decade) I was having more and more problems with stuff getting caught in my throat. To be clear, I wasn’t choking, it wasn’t in my airway, it was in my throat (or just past it). When it happened the only way to fix it was to, well, make it come back up. Trying to drink some water or swallow something else didn’t work and was really painful as my throat tried to push against a blockage. At the time I was seeing an ENT for allergies so I asked him about it. He wrote it off as my not chewing my food well enough. I asked him about it each time I saw him and each time he basically just told me to chew better and/or ‘it’s in your head’, which it very much wasn’t. I finally saw a GI doc who ordered an endoscopy. Turns out my esophagus was so narrow, they couldn’t even get the scope in. They had to rent a pediatric scope from the local children’s hospital. The end result was that there was clearly a problem and they suspected allergies may have caused it.
Long(er) story short, he was annoyed with me, didn’t agree with the diagnosis and as a result I stopped seeing him.
As for what you should do, I’d agree with don_t_ask. You found something different that works. Ask your doc about it. If it works, they might be happy for you. Maybe it was the next thing they were going to suggest. OTOH, they might tell you (in a non-dismissive way) why that new exercise, though it seems to be working, could be causing other issues and it’s why it wasn’t suggested in the first place.
Have you had an imaging done yet? An MRI might help decide what direction the PT should go in.
ETA, and if there is a problem. There’s nothing wrong with getting a second opinion from another doctor, (as I did when I went to the GI doc on my own).