Earlier this year I injured my shoulder by tearing one of the muscles in my rotator cuff. Rotator cuff tears come in a large variety of shapes and sizes and can be triggered by a number of different events so I was fairly lucky in that mine was only a partial tear not, thankfully, a full thickness tear.
I had something awkwardly and put far too much strain on my shoulder joint. I felt a sharp pain at the top of my shoulder and fortunately had the good sense to put down what I was lifting. I gave my shoulder a rub and carried on but next time I lifted it was much more carefully. Everything seemed fine, until the day after.
The next morning my shoulder was agony. Trying to lift my arm straight up in front of me, reaching out for anything or even getting dressed all caused me pain. I couldn't even tuck in my shirt without feeling a sharp pain at the top of my shoulder. Over the following days my shoulder gradually became stiff up and the same movements that had hurt became more and more uncomfortable. Not only was my shoulder giving me pain during the day but I was struggling to sleep. Whenever I lay on my bad shoulder I was kept awake by the pain. If I lay on my good shoulder, I had lie my arm carefully along my body so that it disn't drop down and cause me pain Life was getting very difficult..
I ended up sleeping on my back which did nothing for my marriage as I immediately started to snore like a trooper.
To cut a long story short, after investigation and an MRI scan it turned out that I had torn one of my rotator cuff muscles. I had managed to tear my Supraspinatus tendon which runs under my collar bone, through a channel of bone before it attaches to the head of teh humerus (upper arm bone). Because it was torn it became inflamed. Because it was inflamed it was getting caught against the bone every time that I moved my arm in a particular way resulting in the muscle gradually fraying. I was recommended for surgery. The aim was to shave away a piece of bone to allow the damaged muscle extra room to move so that it could heal. Being in the UK the date was booked for three months away and I started a painful wait.
I started looking into shoulder injuries and their therapy and discovered that a lot of rotator cuff tears can be treated without surgery. Allow the muscle to heal with rest whilst treating the pain and inflammation with anti-inflammatory drugs and ice packs and then, once the pain has subsided start simple low weight exercises to strengthen the rotator cuff muscles.
The most important element of this is the rest. If I had carried on using my shoulder normally, I would have been damaging it further every time that I used it. If I had managed to ignore the pain or worked through it I could have eventually snapped the tendon completely. That would have definitely needed surgery!
In the end,by resting my arm amd avoiding any painful movement, by carefully treating the inflammation I gradually got to the position where I could do very basic easy exercises without any pain. As the exercises strengthened my rotator cuff I gradually regained the movement of my shoulder and now ten weeks on I have full pain free movement again.
I'm lucky because I have an office job. Just by changing my desk layout I could avoid using the injured tendon. If you have a more physical job you may have to think a bit more about how to avoid using your bad shoulder, but it is essential that you do so as continuing to use it will make it worse and all the therapy in the world won't help if you manage to tear it completely. Rotator cuff exercise features in most shoulder injury therapy courses simply because the strength of this group of muscles is fundamental to the wellbeing of your shoulders. Even if you have healthy shoulders it is worth spending a few minutes a day keeping these four muscles in good shape.
Having torn my rotator cuff and ending up with a shoulder impingement I started to research shoulders and the rotator cuff to better understand my own injury. Check out my blog for more useful information
Nick Bryant lives in Shropshire in the UK with his wife and two young children where he is a director in their family recruitment business.His hobbies and interests tend to be family orientated and focussed on the outdoors and sporting activities.He is the proud owner of a vintage VW camper and he and his family spend a great deal of their spare time at the coast camping, body-boarding and surfing in the summer months.He is also a keen golfer. He writes on a number of subjects around personal health and well being and has recently started a blog at http://www.myrotatorcuffcure.blogspot.com.
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