left shoulder pain

[Elmer]

I went to the doctor last year, he indicated I had tendonitis in my left shoulder. He did all the movements to check for rotor cuff issues and I had mobility.

I got a cortisone shot on my shoulder in the back.  The pain went away, but there was still some clicking and popping and sluggishness to the shoulder.

The Doctor attributed this to likely a small tear in the rotator cuff. He advised to take aleave or advil and continue my lifting and stretching routine (which was apart of my physical therapy from when I saw him a year ago)

I went and played 63 holes over the course of 2 days. 3-18’s and 9 (it was awesome).

Now my shoulder is sore, and worse than it was.

I can not strectch my arm behind my back. It hurts to slide my left arm into my golf bag strap,

It is sore to raise my arm up and run my fingers through my hair.

But none of this hurt when golfing.
I can still swing, and I can golf. I just have issues with anything else.

None of the over the counter NSAID seem to do anything!

It is slightly better than it was 4 days ago, but I cant imagine golfing in the next week or 2.

I don’t want to seem like a pain and keep returning to my DR, if it is just muscle fatigue my parts are just over golfed!

But how do you know the difference between muscle fatigue, soreness and damage?

When is it time to seek a second opinion.

I must mention my Dr is very good, he did a heck of a job repairing my right shoulder labrum from a few years ago and handles most all sports related injuires in the area.

Should I just let time heal, since I am 6 month until the start of next golf season?

Am I over thinking this?

[avmech]

Had left shoulder pain stemming from overdoing one exercise at the gym. Ortho did prelims and said torn cuff. Had MRI, showed torn cuff and bone spur. Had it fixed earlier today, sitting with arm in cryocuff and sling, pain meds. No fun, now the healing starts, down for who knows how long. Had no pain swinging a club, played two tournaments in the last week. Pretty sure that while it did not hurt, doing this did make things worse, as the motions that gave me pain now gave pain within a shorter range of motion. Anyway, it is on the mend, I think the next few days will be the worst ones. Take care of the shoulder, it is not going to go away. That said, the fix could be as simple as rest, therapy, and stretching before swinging a club. For your sake, I hope that is all it will take, but do go see your doc.

[Elmer]

Thanks for advice.

Sorry to hear of your pain, but hope your OP is the fix you need.

I have an appt with my doctor this afternoon. This will be the 3rd one since sept.

The shoulder is no longer as sore as it was. The pain has waned, but I know there is an issue there.

I just hope I have the time to fix it and recover by next april.

[avmech]

After my post op appointment, turns out the tendon was completely detached from the bone and had doubled back on itself. Doc had to straighten it out the reattach it to the bone, along with removing the bone spur. So, in my case, surgery was needed. Friend of mine just had the operation, but he had 3 tendons that had pulled away, some from a long time ago and his doc had to find live tendon tissue to tie down to reattach. I guess what I am saying is do not gaff it off, get it checked. You may not need surgery, but then again........

[Elmer]

Had an MRI last friday.

Follow up appt will be in 2 weeks.

Dr still maintains that there is no rotator cuff damage, since I have all the range and motion minus the pain.

He thinks it is severe tendonitus!

[Jim12golf]

I'd suggest staying on top of your doctor.  I had a similar injury and at first they recommended physical therapy as there only appeared to be a partial tear of my rotator cuff.  After several months I still couldn't lift my arm much at all and the next step was arthroscopic surgery.  They found that the rotator cuff wasn't torn but I had a large bone spur, much larger than any MRI/ xray had shown, and that had to be removed.  After surgery, and rehab, it was much better as the bone spur was impinging on the tendons.  It's much easier to have a bone spur removed rather than having rotator cuff surgery and less recovery too so stay on top of it before it gets much worse.  The doctor even admitted that they can only see so much on MRI's etc. and that if it still hurts you have to get it scoped.  Good luck.

[Elmer]

Had an MRI, no rip, no tearing. No surgery.

Just really nasty inflammation.

moderate lifting, stretching and I had been advised to stop carrying my bag on my back.

Might have to invest in a good cart bag and borrow my old mans push cart (he bought a sun mountian, but has yet to use it in 4 years!)

[KingBrand]

You could try Cold Therapy to manage the pain. By using cold therapy post activity it will help reduce the inflammation that is the main culprit with tendonitis. Anti inflammatories work well but can be addictive and can also mess up your stomach. There are also products that help with pre game warm up. Blood flow stimulation works great pre game and cold therapy post game. Without them my golfers elbow would have kept me out of golf.

[caniac6]

I had symptoms very similar to yours, and I switched from carrying my bag to using a push cart. The relief was almost immediate..

[avmech]

Had a doc appointment a month ago, one month after surgery, got the OK to start putting and 2 weeks later to chip. Today had another appointment, doc told me to start gently swinging an iron to stretch muscles. Looking better every day!

[uno6518]

Hopefully your pain gets better, I remember dealing with lingering shoulder issues after years of wear and tear from baseball. When you get it figured out, along with your doctor's recommendations, I'd highly recommend starting to do consistent mobility work and "pre-hab". Shoulders are finicky and it's just harder to move as we get older. Keeping good movement patterns is really important. Even if this is just largely overuse, overuse leads to fatigue, which leads to bad movement compensations that can cause pain.

Check out Eric Cressey--he is a strength and conditioning expert that deals with lots of baseball players and is an expert in shoulder mobility and movement patterns. He has tons of assessment and mobility tips on his blog if you scroll around. Hope that shoulder gets healthy!

[ALS8]

For tendonitis and a torn rotator cuff, cold therapy is always beneficial. After any activity involving the shoulder, the best thing to do is put a cold compress on right after. This will reduce the inflammation and ease the pain. In order to heal these kinds of soft tissue injuries, inflammation needs to be brought down. To continue the healing process you need blood flow. There is a shoulder wrap called BFST (blood flow stimulation therapy) that will promote blood flow to the injured area and will actually heal the tear and/or inflamed/injured tendon. Lots of pro athletes use these wraps and a good friend of mine uses it for his golfers elbow, and it does wonders for him. I really hope you both find relief. Just remember, for shoulder injuries, rest is especially important.