Yay for being fired by the tumor guy!!
I started PT in April for what the orthopedist said was "bursitis". All I knew was my arm hurt like a bitch. We did a lot of arm strengthening exercises and ones to strengthen the muscles that work the shoulder (like lifting little weights overhead, stretching my arm up the wall as far as I could with a weight, etc...) the idea being if the muscles all worked together the pain would ease. It didn't. They did a steroid injection into the bursa. It felt better for 2 weeks then the pain came back. I went back to PT. We did more exercises. Then my elbow started hurting like my shoulder. They said "tennis elbow" and gave IT a steroid injection. That one actually worked!
But meanwhile the shoulder started to hurt worse, constantly. The PT was mystified, he said my muscles were all getting stronger, so the pain should be improving not getting worse. He said in his career he's seen a few people who needed a second injection, but he was concerned there was something else going on. So I went back to the Ortho and complained, loudly, and insisted they do an MRI. By this point I could only sleep with my arm braced against my chest, any other position was agony.
MRI came back with an 80% tear in the rotator cuff, damage to the bicep, and bone spurs! Plus arthritis, but I expected that, I have it everywhere. They immediately banned me from PT (to prevent further tearing) and said surgery had to be scheduled ASAP. So I cancelled my trip to New Zealand, moved up the DS surgery, and have been waiting, and it still isn't scheduled. I sent them a love letter today.
The Ortho surgeon told me that the recovery process from this surgery is rather grueling. For the first month or two they'll do passive movement exercises in PT, meaning they'll move my arm for me, because it is still healing and you are in a brace for the rest of the time. Once you can move it they'll slowly start the exercises to gain strength. This has to be done really gradually because you risk another injury in the early months. The first three months are the most painful and you don't want to travel and disrupt therapy during this time. He said to expect it to take a full year of PT to get back to normal, or as close to normal as I'm ever going to get, as sometimes you never regain full use/full strength. I know others who have had the surgery, some agree with this, some say they did more like 6 months, my guess is it varies by person and by doctor, like everything.
Have they done imaging to find out if it is a rotator cuff tear? It took 6 months for me to get that stupid MRI. My advice to anyone is to hound the doctor until they do useful testing. I had few of the classic signs of a rotator cuff tear upon examination. Small tears sometimes heal themselves, larger ones can't. But there are a number of things that can cause those symptoms too, I wish they'd done the MRI sooner!
