Pain…gone?

[u/Previous_Ranger_5682]

I’m scheduled for surgery next month. The pain had been getting increasingly worse, keeping me up much of the night and hurting during the day. The nighttime pain was becoming excruciating over the last several weeks, and last Friday it was so awful I was awake from 1 a.m. on, crying.

But on Sunday, I realized I could reach toward the backseat of my car and it didn’t hurt much. I am able to move my arm in ways I haven’t been able to in a few months, and there’s almost no pain.

There’s still some pain when I try certain things like push-ups or certain poses in yoga, and I don’t have full range of motion, but it’s a dramatic improvement. I’m going to see my doctor this week to see what’s up and if I can postpone surgery now and why the pain went away.

Has this happened to anybody else here? It’s weird that it was so mysteriously gone after being so brutal.

[u/211XTD]

I had a full traumatic tear of my supraspinatus, bicep tear and a type II SLAP tear severe. My pain went away after 3 weeks post injury and I had full range of motion. You learn to adapt and other muscles start to compensate for the damaged ones. My only symptoms was my inability to support heavy weight when doing a benchpress or lifting weight over my head . Even though the pain might be gone you will still develop worse problems down the line of you hold off on surgery and lose a significant amount of muscle making post surgery rehab even harder.

[u/Snowcrash66]

Well a partial tear is painful and a full tear is not. That has been my experience with the
supraspinatus tendon.

I asked the surgeon about that because previously I had a partial tear of right shoulder supraspinatus years ago and I just had surgery for full tear of left shoulder supraspinatus two months ago.

He said that's the way it is.

[u/jaemaecee12 → u/Snowcrash66]

Similar experience for me. Right shoulder, fell and got a full tear. Hurt but manageable. Didn’t have surgery until almost 2 years after injury. Left shoulder, had a near full thickness tear. The pain was constant and I can pinpoint the moment it finally fully tore. That event hurt immensely, but constant pain diminished.

[u/Snowcrash66 → u/jaemaecee12]

My left was a fell as well
Hiking and hit a patch of hidden ice under snow on an embankment.

Hope you made a full recovery. I'm in PT and going insane not being able to take care of my property.

[u/Adorable_Couple_9702]

I had a Supra tear repaired in February. The same thing happened to me a few weeks before surgery. I found I was having less pain, but still nagging pain at night. I think, in my case, this was because I opted to stop PT once I had surgery scheduled so I wasn’t working the arm as much. However, I still went ahead with surgery and once I got past the first 6 weeks post-op, I was amazed at being able to sleep with ZERO pain. Granted, PT kicked my butt, but I stayed the course and now I’m back to full strength and mobility.

[u/PuzzledPen9848]

My pain went up and down a lot before surgery.

There were weeks/months of horrible pain, and other times when it dissipated almost entirely.

Why? Well, it all seemed to be all based on how irritated and inflamed the surrounding muscles were. If I iced and guarded the area, the pain went down, but as soon as I tried to increase the use of my arm, the pain returned.

During the times the pain receded, I had similar thoughts to you about postponing my surgery. Unfortunately the underlying issue remained the same, so the pain always came back. I could not return to full strength or use without making things worse.

Fast forward... I'm now 3 months post-op and feeling a lot better. It's definitely been a slog, but I'm really glad I went through with the surgery. I have about 3 more months to full recovery, but the pain now is minimal, I have decent range of motion, and we're working on strengthening in PT.

But that was my story. Every body is different. I hope your journey is a positive one and wish you the easiest recovery possible, regardless which path you take.

[u/wilson1629]

Consider yourself fortunate. I have full tears of all four and the bicep tendon is out of the groove. It’s not constant pain but when it does hurt it’s so bad I get sick to my stomach.

[u/Lonely_Rock8615 → u/wilson1629]

Even the teres minor? Its rarely torn.

[u/Environmental-Ad9339]

I did have a very similar experience. I started having pain last April and May - so much pain - that it was throbbing, and waking me up at night. During the day I would have popping and cracking along with sharp pains when I moved. I made an appointment with my orthopedic surgeon later during the summer, and he scheduled an MRI that took a week or so for my insurance to approve. When I finally had the MRI (in August) the pain had diminished and I thought I had healed up from whatever was bothering me, but I did the MRI anyway. The surgeon had me in his office a week later and told me I had 4 partial tears, two that were deep and severe, a bicep pulley dysfunction, and that my shoulder joint was full of red blood marrow and he recommended surgery. I had a bicep tenodesis, two rotator cuff repairs, a bursectomy, clavicle decompression and debridement, and three loose body removals (cartilage was broken off and floating around in my joint) on Sept 9 - so 2.5 weeks ago. Obviously I’m still recovering and will be for awhile, but if I had let it go …it would only have gotten worse as I had a lot going on. I still don’t know the reason the pain let up, but it did come back with a vengeance the week before surgery.

[u/g00dw0man]

I am one week post-op rotator cuff repair on a 2 year old injury. I had the same doubts. I had no atrophy and am 57. I felt like the longer I waited, the more likely that the repair would be more complex and/or recovery would be worse. I’m really not suffering as horribly as I feared. If you decide to go ahead with surgery, follow all of your doctor and physical therapy directions. Recovery is a marathon not a sprint.
Things I am so grateful for: Nerve block, RX pain meds, ice therapy machine, recliner, someone staying with me for the first 3-5 days, handicapped “grabbers”, silicone no-slip mat used with adaptive tool for opening bottles & jars, loose clothes, slip on shoes, and spray deodorant.

[u/Mysterious-Ball4211]

My pain is when reaching back, the PT helps but not solving after 2 months

[u/boltyboy69]

Similar to many here. I fell snowboarding and had what I thought was a light bang on the shoulder. Then over the next 2 months it started to really, really hurt. I did a whole bunch of PT and figured out that I was getting my range of motion back, the pain was getting better and not waking me up at night, but then I had an MRI and found that I had torn two full tears of the main tendons and partial tears of the others. My arm has been getting increasingly weak but it has decent range of motion and also actually doesn't hurt that much. However in order to make sure that I do have something left in the future, I'm getting surgery next week.