Obligatory acknowledgement: You are not my doctor. I have an ortho appointment on Monday, but I’d like to be a little less of a zombie between now and then.
I am 99.9% sure that tennis elbow is the right diagnosis. The pain is exactly where it points to on all the charts. But dang, it sure is a whole lot worse than that name makes it sound. And it’s weirdly difficult to nail down the movements which not to do in order to keep from causing the stabbing pains.
Every evening with dinner I take a Tylenol and a Naprosyn in the hopes that they will provide some relief, but to be honest it’s just magical thinking at this point. They never do touch the pain at all.
Has anybody else been through this? Any tips or tricks that helped you get some rest? I can handle the pain when I’m awake, but if I don’t get some sleep soon I’m going to be miserable. It doesn’t help that I’m a side sleeper.
To those of you who haven’t been through this, a piece of advice: There are a very few things that we actually MUST do with our dominant hand - writing, fine artistry, knife work, and such. But there are a hundred other things each day which we could just as easily do with our non-dominant hand, it just doesn’t occur to us. We automatically reach out with our dominant, which eventually gets overworked and something like this happens.
I strongly advise all of you to consciously divide the workload before you have to, because this surely does suck.
Thank you Tripolar. I don’t know what that is, but I’ll google it.
I finally did find an answer. I put on a tight t-shirt, and then pulled the bad arm back inside of it. Once I found a comfortable position, it was hugged against me and couldn’t flop around when I moved in my sleep. Got about 5 hour’s rest, and am feeling almost human again.
I used a device that kept my wrist in a neutral position ((bent up 5-10 degress or so) It was basically a wrist brace with a piece of metal in the palm. Helped a lot
When I was dealing with tennis elbow (and shortly after my associated surgery), I used a few pillows to “encourage” my sleeping position. I’m also a side sleeper. I put a bulky pillow behind me to keep myself from rolling over, and a comfy soft on in front that I could either rest my arm over, or lightly hug.
In my case, I got bad enough that shaking hands or tying my shoe hurt. Cortisone shots helped for a little bit but were just putting off the inevitable. I opted for elbow debridement surgery, and haven’t really looked back since then.
Thanks, everyone for your responses. I saw the Doc yesterday. He took x-rays and put me through some very painful movements. Then he stuck his thumb in just the right/wrong spot and made me shriek. “Yup, that’s tennis elbow” says he.
I was surprised that the brace is a wrist one not an elbow one. Apparently this stops the tendon from extending and lets it heal. It def does not stop the pain when I forget and straighten my arm suddenly, or try and scratch my nose.
Daily Meloxicam is also in the offing. (Haven’t picked it up yet.)
He said “This always gets better, it usually takes six months to a year. I expect you to be 20% better in 4 weeks.” Yuck!!
I love meloxicam. It works great for me as an anti-inflammatory, and my doctors prefer it to ibuprofen.
I also use a wrist brace to help deal with mine, for what it’s worth. I had a previous issue with radial tunnel syndrome, which is also around the elbow. My ortho didn’t want to add compression to that area, so we didn’t use an elbow brace. The wrist brace keeps you from rotating in certain ways, and helped me a good bit.