I can’t believe a small nondescript piece of tissue can cause so much pain. As things stand I cannot even pick up a cup with my affected hand. :eek: My doctor prescribed me an NSAID for a month. With that over, now he’s prescribed me a hefty dose of patience. To be lovingly applied on the affected area for the next 6 months or until the pain decides to go away on its own, whichever takes longer.
My cold packs ain’t making me feel better. Any present or past sufferers, how long does it take before the inflammation reduces without NSAID intake? Does an elbow brace help? The thought of living with this pain for 6 months depresses me.
I am just now getting over surgery for golf elbow, which is similar. Golf is inside of elbow and tennis elbow is outside of elbow. I got mine from tennis though.
The strap keeps the tendon from sliding against your elbow. It reduces the pain when you do things and helps the tendon heal faster because you don’t keep irritating it. Tendons are slow to heal because they don’t have much blood supply I think.
I gave myself “Golfer’s Elbow” from doing lots of wide-grip pull-ups.
I found that the strap helped quite a bit, but the only way to heal is to stop aggravating it. So, I took almost a year off from pull-ups.
Now, it’s much better, and I’m back to doing them, but I stop when I start to feel that familiar pain.
Tendon injuries are slow to heal, and IMHO, there’s nothing magical that can be done to speed up the process very much - just time off from whatever you were doing to caused the problem in the first place.
It took mine several months to get better- what helped more than anything was taking it easy with that arm/hand, and taking naproxen to reduce the inflammation.
I’ve got it going on right now. It’s the tennis elbow tendon, but I brought it about by too much mousing at work. And THAT’s something I can’t leave off doing for six months. I try to limit any elbow work at night and on weekends, but it’s pretty hard when it’s your dominant arm.
I bought some CBD salve online from CBDistillery, having heard from someone at work that their orthopedic surgeon recommended it for a bum knee. It does work, at least for me, but it smells pretty strong. I also bought an “upright” mouse, which causes you to hold your hand and wrist in a much more natural, relaxed position while mousing. It helps.
I just recently got over “golf elbow.” I got it by walking my dogs every day and letting them pull on the leash, which was always in my left hand. Took me about 3 months to figure out what was causing it (like seriously, it didn’t even occur to me…), then about 6 months of stopping that action and wearing the strap to make it go away.
I didn’t use ice or NSAIDs much but when it was really inflamed, after exercise, I did. I stopped using my left arm to hold the dog leash, wore the strap during exercise, and just plain skipped out on anything that made it hurt. Even lifting 5lb weights was crazy, so I didn’t lift at all.
Like everyone else said, it just takes time…if you’re not bad off enough to need surgery like **LWIBR **did. One day I was in tai chi class doing something that normally aggravated my elbow, and realized I didn’t have my strap and realized it didn’t matter!
The thing that hurt the most for me with golf elbow on my left side was reaching back to grab my seat belt to put it on. Yowza!
Had it years ago. Doctor asked if there was any new behavior in my life and then it clicked – new puppy, who played tug-o-war and pulled on her leash.
Solution was immobilizing it until the tiny tears in the tendon repaired themselves, then gentle exercise to build up resistance to future damage. This led to the absolute weirdest medical advice I have ever received.
I was writing down the doctor’s suggestions and when he got to the aftercare, he said to hold my arm straight down and gently rotate my wrists and elbows. “Hold something for weight, so that it stretches you just a little farther than if you held nothing. Like a can of vegetable.”
I scribbled furiously.
“Like corn. or green beans,” the doctor added, helpfully.
I was flabbergasted. How could it possibly matter what was IN the cans? I tried to imagine the medical conference discussions of the specific gravity of green beans and their utility in tendon rehabilitation.
I got tennis elbow from using a screwdriver. Yep, it’s painful.
I had a great doctor at the time (since retired, dammit) and, of all things, he sent me off to see an osteopath. WTF, I hear you say.
Yeah, that’s what I thought as well, but the exercises they made me do worked, and have worked again when there have been recurrences. I went looking for a video which explained what I had to do, and these two are the best I could find.
This video from about 4.00 to 5.30 illustrates a massage.
The ONLY purpose of linking to these videos is to illustrate the exercises I did. IANAD, obviously, so I won’t recommend this to anyone. But if the problem persists, you might like to ask your doctor about it.
I have now ruined my reputation on the Dope. But what can I say? It worked then and it works still. For me.
j
ETA: PS - my doctor also told me to get an electric screwdriver!
I will try this one. I had bought a cold pack that didn’t help much.
Diclofenac works extremely well for me, but my doctor advises against any and all NSAIDs for longer than a month. But I have some tablets left and take one if the pain becomes too severe to function with.
Thanks for the videos. Better than my doctor’s printed exercise sheet.
Another among the several good reasons to avoid objectifying language when referring to animals. I used the pronoun “her” (also, not coincidentally, “who” instead of “which”) in the previous sentence, so you can expect “it” doesn’t refer to the dog.
I AM a tennis player and have gotten tennis elbow a few times. The first time around, I tried to play through it. Not advised. Got a cortisone shot, but that only masked the pain. When it got to the point where brushing my teeth was painful, I finally threw in the towel and rested it for 6 weeks. I changed my tennis racquet and strings, invested in an ergonomic mouse and keyboard, and then waited for the inflamation to subside. After 8 weeks, I started playing again, just one time a week at first, then gradually working up to 3 times a week.
Now, whenever I feel that familiar twinge, I quit playing for at least a week. Ice, ibuprofen, SAIDs, stretching exercises, the tennis elbow strap all helped to alleviate the pain but not the underlying cause. The ONLY thing that worked for me was resting it. And that includes computers and gaming. (Candy crush type games that use repetitive wrist motions are just as bad as tennis, IME.)
