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My Rotator Cuff Problem
I am 53 years old and two years ago I tore my left rotator cuff and ended up with a shoulder impingement. I was lucky on two counts. One, it was my left arm and I am naturally right handed and two; It was only a partial tear.
I must admit that at the time, I felt far from lucky. What started out one morning as a sore shoulder quickly became completely debilitating. The range of movement in my arm got less and less, the pain that was originally limited to my shoulder spread down my arm becoming more and more severe as each day passed.
My shoulder stiffened up, I lost more and more movement in it.
When my shoulder was at its worst I was struggling to sleep at night. I had torn my left rotator cuff so lying on my left shoulder hurt. The problem was that lying on my right shoulder meant my left arm ended up in an equally painful position. My only chance of sleeping was to lie flat on my back which meant that I snored. I was sleeping so badly that I just ended up tired and irritable during the day because I hadn’t had a good nights sleep in several weeks.
I tried changing sides in the bed, and supporting my bad arm on a pillow but that didn’t work either. Between sleeplessness and daytime pain I was fast becoming like a bear with a sore head, snapping at everyone.
Driving got difficult, especially reversing. Having prided myself on my reverse parking it was embarrassing to have to swap seats with my wife so that she could park the car. Eventually driving got so painful that I simply stopped driving anywhere.
My Golf was one of the first things to go. The only thing I could manage was putting. Somehow being 200 over par didn’t appeal.
Getting up and getting ready for work became a chore. Having a shower in the morning even became painful. I tried a bath but nearly got stuck because I couldn’t put the weight on my bad arm to lift myself out. I ended up floundering around like a beached whale until I managed to turn over.
Getting dressed in the morning was okay as long as I didn’t want to tuck in any of my clothes or pull anything over my head. Reaching behind me to tuck in a shirt left my shoulder feeling as if someone had tried to tear my arm off.
Even with an office job, work was little better. Reaching for the phone was painful, even reaching for my coffee mug. I had to rearrange my desk to avoid using my left arm as much as possible.
How I Tore my Rotator Cuff
So how did this happen?
You can injure your rotator cuff in a variety of ways. Sometimes it can be a sports injury, sometimes work related especially if you work overhead a lot or sometimes you can damage your rotator cuff just by getting older. As if the wrinkles weren’t enough.
I remember exactly what I did to get mine. I lifted some furniture….badly! I had some flat packed furniture delivered for my home office and being impatient to see it set up, decided to carry it upstairs on my own. As I lifted the second piece I felt a pop in my shoulder. I thought little of it at the time. Gave my shoulder a rub and carried on installing my new desk.
That was how I tore my rotator cuff. It was a small tear of the supraspinatus tendon. In itself, it was not too bad. The problem was that after the tear the tendon became inflamed and that was where my problems started to get worse. I had a shoulder impingement!
The supraspinatus tendon runs through a channel of bone just under your collar bone. When it becomes inflamed it can become pinched in this channel. As you continue to use your shoulder the tendon gets rubbed against the bone. This causes even more damage. It is a vicious circle. Damage causes inflammation, inflammation causes damage….causes pain!
And that was exactly what I had been doing and why my shoulder was getting worse with each passing day.
After a couple of weeks, I had come to the conclusion that this was not going to get better on its own so I took my shoulder to the doctor. The doctor sent me to a specialist. I had an Xray and MRI and my rotator cuff tear and shoulder impingement were diagnosed.
I was given steroid injections to help with the swelling and physio to try and get my shoulder moving again but nothing seemed to work. I would rest my shoulder, the pain would subside, but as soon as I started using it again, it would deteriorate.
After four painful months of treatment it was decided that I needed surgery. The plan was to shave away some bone so that the channel that my tendon runs through was wider. This would free up the tendon and hopefully sort out my shoulder. Surgery was booked but being in the
UK with our NHS, I had to wait, and the waiting list was three months long.
Another three months with a bad shoulder seemed just too much for me. By now, I had been out of action for close to five months. It doesn’t matter how you damaged your shoulder in the first place. All you want is to get rid of the pain and get things moving again, which is exactly how I was thinking then.
So What Has Changed For Me?
I rolled out of my side of the bed this morning, wandered into the bathroom and took a pain free shower, got dressed, pulling my tee shirt nonchalantly over my head, didn’t tuck it in but that’s a fashion thing, nothing to do with my shoulder. I had breakfast, pain free and then drove to work, reverse parked the car and sat working all day, pain free. Using the phone and reaching for things on my desk all day long.
And less than two months ago I was suffering the indignity of shoulder pain from a badly torn rotator cuff. I was even booked for surgery to sort out the resulting shoulder impingement.
What happened?
I found a website about Pilates based exercises for shoulder problems where I downloaded an eBook called How to Treat and Prevent Shoulder Injuries written by a lady called Jennifer Adolfs, who is a clinical exercise specialist and certified Pilates instructor. As well as running her own Pilates studio she has also written a series of eBooks on how to deal with specific joint problems.
The eBook helped to end months of inconvenience for me and got my shoulder working 100% pain free in just over eight weeks.
What I liked about it was that it focuses on the health and strength of the whole shoulder, not just the rotator cuff. With seventeen different muscles in the shoulder it is important to get them all working together
Starting with stretches to avoid any further injury and then exercises to help stabilise your shoulder it then moved on to strengthening exercises. Being Pilates based it was all about flexibility and control. I felt the difference almost immediately and always felt that the exercises were safe even with my injury.
So What Do You Get?
The eBook gives detailed information on the anatomy of the shoulder helping you to understand what you need to do to put things right.
- Lots of helpful information on shoulder injuries, their symptoms and treatments enables you to really understand your injury.
- A series of stretches to get your shoulder ready for exercise again so that you don’t do any more damage.
- It shows you how to quickly get full movement back in your shoulder using range of motion exercises.
- A second set of exercises shows you how to stabilise the shoulder.
- Plus quick and simple, daily muscle strengthening exercises to help keep your shoulder strong and stop you getting injured again once your shoulder is back to normal.
- All the exercises are explained well and easy to do.
- The great thing for me was that it I was able to download it and start straight away.
- All the exercises can be done at home so it was easy to fit in with my daily routine
- And all this with a 100% money back guarantee.
Things started to improve straight away.
I started to see a difference within a couple of weeks. Reaching for things became easier and I started sleeping better at night. By the time that I had been doing the exercises for four weeks I was back driving without any problems. It took just over eight weeks for me to be confident in my shoulder again. I tried my first nine holes of golf at twelve weeks and did just fine. Only did nine holes just to be safe. No pain and a reasonable round.
Life is now back to normal, sleeping well, happy again and completely pain free. Considering that I was told I need surgery I feel that I’m doing pretty well.
So if you are suffering from a torn rotator cuff, shoulder impingement or tendonitis don’t just sit there. If you found my blog it’s because you are looking for a solution. This one works so take a look and see what you think.
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