Frozen shoulder

[BestIsWest]

Been diagnosed with a frozen shoulder by the physio. I’ve been experiencing pain for a couple of months and now can’t lift my arm above 90 degrees or rotate it outwards. I struggle to do up my bra and sudden movements can be nauseatingly painful.

I had this in the other shoulder about 10 years ago and it followed the standard pattern of a year freezing, a year frozen and a year thawing. Eventually I had a corticosteroid injection and that seemed to work miracles - but it might just have been coincidental timing. The shoulder healed completely but I was younger then.

I haven’t yet seen the GP but I’m going to need stronger painkillers. Any tips on what I can do to help myself? I can’t bear the thought of 3 years of this.

I saw an osteopath last time round but it didn’t really work for me. I may go down that route again if the hydrodilation doesn’t work though.

No frozen shoulder here but an impingement which gave me over 6 months of hideous pain and made things like cooking, drying my hair and driving difficult and to the point I felt sick.

I tried physio, exercises, a whole variety of pain meds and the only thing which brought relief was acupuncture. It might be worth a try - I appreciate it won't fix the underlying problem for you but could help with pain relief to give you a break.

Good luck- I hope things get better for you.

I had a frozen (right) shoulder about 5 years ago, aged 44. It was agony - I've quite a high pain threshold but this really knocked me for 6. GP referred me to hospital (took 6 months for appt) whereby I had a variety of scans & xrays to check bones/skeleton were not damaged.

Initially (pre frozen shoulder diagnosis) I saw a physio to begin with. I then stopped physio after a few sessions as it was then officially frozen shoulder & was advised to not have any form of surgery, it might cause problem later.

Could only sleep on my left side for 6 months & positioned pillows to stop me rolling over to my right in the night. I then always felt I had a sore left hip due to the constant sleeping on the one side.

I did the mobility exercises with the band to push my arm/shoulder into moving again, it was agony!

But I tried to have a positive out of it - it forced my left arm into action (I was v one sided) and I became better with eg emptying washing machine with my left arm & it's strength definitely improved thankfully.

All together, it took 2-3 years to right itself and I've 95% of the movement back. Were I to do the backstroke swimming, it would be obvious to a trained eye the difference in each arms' circulation movement.

At the gym now, I do extra stretches on my right shoulder just to keep it moving beyond the normal range of movement.

Finally, I've a desk based job so got a keyboard and mouse support thing where I can rest my wrist which helped.

Wishing you as speedy a recovery as possible but set yourself up for the long run I'm afraid. HTH

Thank you.
Northern, a few people have suggested acupuncture so I will definitely investigate that.

Urban thanks for the tips. Glad yours is almost back to normal. Funnily enough I had a gel mouse and keyboard support in my last job, but changed jobs about a year ago - I’ve been thinking I need to get hold of some supports as I,m sure the constant mouse action doesn’t help.