How can I Stop this pain - Fell and tore my rotator cuff in my right shoulder?

Question

I am hooked up to a tens machine - taking co-codamol, with the occassional ibroprefen, I still cant sleep I have had about 3 hrs in the last threee nights

Help

Answer 1

Boobiebear,

Uh-oh.

How do you know it's a rotator cuff tear? If you've been to the doctor with it, your physician should have given you enough information on it to help. If you've not yet been to the doctor, you really should go. You will need tests if it really is a rotator cuff tear and not just a strain or sprain.

The shoulder if a very complicated joint. The rotator cuff is part of a four-muscle system that wraps part of the top of the shoulder and attaches to the upper arm bone, the humerus.

Do you have weakness and/or pain when you raise your arm? Does your shoulder "crackle" when you rotate the joint?

These symptoms should drive you to a doctor to have him diagnose it for sure, which often takes first, an X-ray, then, since X-rays are not always very helpful on soft-tissue injuries, an MRI.

Then your doctor can tell you what you need to do.

There are nonsurgical treatments that sometimes you can do at home, depending on the severity of the injury, but they require quite a bit of rest and no overhead activity (I hope you don't play tennis. This will end your 110 MPH serve). It usually takes a long time to heal this, often several months. If it's severe enough--if it's a complete separation--it will probably require surgery. Happily, most of these surgeries can be outpatient surgeries. It will simply require several weeks of your arm in a sling and after a couple of weeks physical therapy to go with it.

Interesting that you are on co-codamol. That was prescribed, or did you start taking that on your own? The reason I ask is because it is not an antiinflammatory. The acetominophen in it does nothing for inflammation and therefore cannot speed healing. The ibuprofen can, but you say that you take it only "occasionally."

Can you go off the co-codamol long enough to try naproxen sodium ("Aleve")? This can be taken in doses of up to 1200 mg/da for a while (when it was a prescription drug, this was a common dosage level. Since the tablets tend to be 220 mg tabs, you can take three in the morning and two (or three) at night as long as you take it only with a full meal. It can be quite irritating to the stomach at those doses, but it works well in my experience), and you might want to try it as it is a pain reliever and an antiinflammatory.

This, of course, assumes that you have not yet been to see the doctor, that you really do have a rotator cuff injury, and that you do not need surgery.

It really would be good to take it to the doctor. You don't have to do everything he says, you don't even have to take the tests, but I woul dthink that it would be good to know if it really is the rotator cuff and not something else, like bursitis. The bursa in the shoulder is right in that area and can mimic some--some,not all--of the symptoms of a rotator cuff tear.

At any rate, rest it--you'd have to do that anyway--take antiinflammatories, and be patient with it.

And I would recommend that you see a doctor.

Answer 2

Go see the doctor if you haven't already,I assume you already have.
Take a relaxing bath,massage your shoulder a lot.And to get to sleep make sure you do take a relaxing bath,put on some incense and read.I remember when I was suffeirng form Insomnia and couldn't get to sleep ad that helped me.Good luck :)

Answer 3

short term grin and bear it, long term use arnica. Tablets should help but I prefer the oil. Massage it in