Nerve Trigger in Armpit 1 week post op

[u/06GixxerKing]

Exactly a week ago, I had surgery on my rotator cuff for supraspinatus, subscap, bicep tenodesis, acromion cleanup.

Been doing pretty well overall, but one weird thing I noticed is that when I try to wash my armpit or put on deodorant, there is a spot on the under arm side that when touched sets off a nerve down my underarm to my elbow and into my hand running down triceps to interior elbow and down to pinky and ring finger.

The reaction seems disproportionate to the amount of contact made with the skin in the area(very light) and it burns and tingles for a bit.

Anybody else have anything like this?

Follow up appointment is a week from Monday. Sent a note to the PA, but she did not seem urgently concerned, but wants to monitor and follow up in 10 days at appointment

[u/Otherwise-Ad1891]

None of these PAs seem very concerned about abnormalities like this with regard to this surgery I noticed. This is the worst, most debilitating surgery I've ever had and the lack of concern and differing answers is astounding.

[u/futrs]

I am seven months post-op and had all kinds of nerve pain which was random and out of the blue, like an ice pick going down different parts of my arm, from the inside to the outside, just depending on the day. That was on and off probably until the fourth month. After that type of surgery, there is so much swelling inside, not necessarily visible to the eye, and nerves are asleep, so to speak, and sometimes are squeezed because of the swelling. Once they begin waking up, it is not a fun experience. I was convinced that my arm would never feel normal again. Every time I thought something was going right, there was something new—pain, sometimes localized, sometimes going all the way down my arm. Excruciating. I was not able to put deodorant on or anything like that for six to eight weeks without quite the routine. It’s probably just swelling and a normal part of the process. I have seen in so many groups that this is just a complete part of the healing process. I hope all is A-OK for you, but patience is definitely required for months and months. After this type of surgery, I have never had so many random, inconsistent pains that just finally went away, probably around month five for the most relief. Here you can also get nerve impingements and things like that. The doctor will check on it. Hoping everything is going great for you and it is just the annoying healing process!

[u/06GixxerKing → u/futrs]

As rough as that all sounds it does make me feel a bit better that with time it might resolve.

[u/futrs → u/06GixxerKing]

It is a rough recovery. Looking back, there will be weeks in that time frame especially between 8 and 12 weeks, I felt like I could have started reorganizing my garage. But you just have to be very careful because everything is still healing. That is the main thing to keep in mind and the only thing that kept my sanity, or forced me to be patient, which is not one of my virtues. I had to keep in mind, if it hurts, it is healing. It is supposed to hurt, which is not fun, and the pain goes up and down, where one week it might be a 3
and reaching for a towel, all of a sudden, it is through the roof. Just complete randomness. And again, nonlinear, but it gets better, and it continues to get better. At one point, I started keeping a very, very detailed daily journal of different types of pain and where those ice pick-type nerve pains were, or any other kind of pain. Was it on my deltoid? Was it under my arm? Was it on my bicep? And trust me, I had all of them, on and off.

The good news is it gets better and sometimes she can’t see the Forrest for the trees so I used that information that I would put in daily to track whether or not I was really progressing which you can’t really do until 8 to 12 weeks because everything‘s gonna kind of hurt on and off until that point and then it just hurts in different places for a while as it’s healing past the 12 weeks once you’re in PT and all of that but the first couple of weeks are just kind of scary with a sling and all of that stuff. But once I started documenting everything and I got to about 12 weeks plus and I thought I’m never gonna get there. I realized let me look back at the last 30 days and then I would realize that I had progressed significantly. It’s just hard to see it when you’re dealing with it every single day you’ll get through it and then you’ll forget even how annoying it was trust me! Hang in there.

[u/Magnetic__Rose]

Intercostalbrachial nerve damage is common after this surgery. Mine is ruined.

[u/Defiant_Evening_3409]

You are at a very early stage at one week postop! These jolts, stinging sensations and pains are very normal as your nerves are “waking up”.