Apology

   For all those who are reading this, I am sorry. I have not posted anything in a while because I have not moved on in my therapy like I thought that I was going to. I am currently a college student and finals are in 2 weeks. I am also in my roommate's dance and the performances are next weekend...so I have been quite busy. I was planning on going on to Step 3 this last weekend but I did not because I was too busy and I also injured my shoulder slightly Wednesday because I worked it a little too hard in Core and More class. I am planning on just putting my therapy on hold until I am done with my exercise classes and this dance so that I can truly rest my shoulder. Part of this program is not to do any stretching or exercises for the shoulder until Step 5, but as it hurts, I stretch it and some of my exercise classes have been hurting it. I will still put the hot pack on it and massage it as it hurts, but I am going to hold off moving on to the next step until I don't have to use it for anything anymore so that it can heal correctly.

Core & Strength

   I took Core & Strength class last night. That class definitely worked my shoulder harder than the others and I had to take many breaks, but my shoulder actually feels pretty good. I did therapy before class and before I went to bed. During class we used weights and I did the best that I could until I just couldn't do it anymore. It was definitely the most that I've done with my shoulder in a while!

   Overall, today my shoulder actually feels pretty good. I didn't have time to do therapy on it this morning, but I will do it later tonight when I get home. I hope that everything continues feeling this good. I am thinking that this weekend I will move on to Step 3 in the program and I will write about how the first day of that goes.

Hip-Hop

   Well, I have some good news and some bad news. Last night I did Hip-Hop Hustle and my shoulder started hurting. We had a set of moves that we kept our arms above our head or parallel to the ground and after just a few short minutes of doing these moves my shoulder started crying out to me in pain. :(

   My shoulder continued to hurt somewhat throughout the rest of the class...but...the good news is that after the class was over it stopped hurting within a half hour! Previously, anytime that I do something that hurts my shoulder like that, it tends to hurt all night and disrupts my sleep. Well, this time the pain went away pretty soon. I didn't even go home right away and do my therapy! I am very happy with this progress and hope that it gets better and better. :)

Week 2

  My second week went pretty well. My shoulder has less pain and I think that I am almost ready to move on to the next step in this 7 step recovery program. I got sick at the beginning of the week and neglected to do my therapy until about Wednesday, but I did it after that and it really feels a lot better. It hasn't been hurting, which is really nice! The only time this last week that it hurt was Saturday afternoon. I did the therapy and it didn't take the pain away but after about 15 minutes or so after taking some Tylenol the pain subsided.

  Overall, my week went pretty well. I think sometime this week I will move onto the next step and I will definitely write a blog about what I did and how it went.

Week 1

   I apologize that I have not done this blog post before now but I got really busy and then I got sick Monday so this post has been delayed longer than I wanted it to be.

   Week 1 went pretty well. I put a heat pack on my shoulder 2-3 times a day with massaging it either before or after I put the heat pack on it. I then put the essential oil (that I mentioned in an earlier post) on it.

   Overall, my shoulder felt pretty good. I did Hip-Hop class on Tuesday and I didn't have any pain afterwards. It felt amazing! I normally can only do Hip-Hop full out (with my arms) for about 15 minutes before my shoulder starts hurting but that night there was only one move that I had to modify a little bit because it hurt and I had no pain after the class was over.

   I proceeded to do the therapy Wednesday and Thursday and then also did Yoga on Thursday night. The thing that I like about Yoga is that it is the one exercise that did not hurt my shoulder afterwards. Some of the moves would hurt my shoulder, especially if I did them for a while, but there was almost no pain after Yoga class. Thursday night, I could not hold some poses for longer than 30 seconds because my shoulder would start to hurt, but I made it through and felt refreshed and energized afterwards.

   This weekend I got a little bit behind. I only put the heat pack on, massaged it, and put oil on my shoulder about 2 times a day but it still felt pretty good. Monday morning I did my normal therapy but then I got sick and did not continue with it the rest of the day. My sickness carried over into Tuesday and I did not have time to do the therapy this morning. Consequently, my shoulder is in more pain this afternoon than it has been since I started but still...it is not as much pain as I had in it before I started the therapy. I am definitely going to go home right now and do my therapy while trying to relax and feel better from my recent sickness.

Next post: Week 2

Products

   I am using two different products to try and help my shoulder. First is The 7 Step Rotator Cuff Treatment System and the second is an essential oil.

   The 7 Step Rotator Cuff Treatment System is a book.


   For about $47 it comes with both the hard copy and the eBook. It takes a slightly different approach then normal rotator cuff treatments. Instead of doing exercises at the beginning of your treatment, they try to heal the injury first, get you back in tune with your whole body, and strengthen both your shoulder and the muscles around it.

   I also downloaded a few other stretching handbooks onto my iPad for future use when I get to the step that I am supposed to start stretching. These come from the same page that you download the eBook from.




   The first step in this book is for those who have injured their shoulder within the last 3 days. It involves immediate pain relief. Since my injury is not recent, I started on step 2.

   Step 2 involves applying heat and massaging your shoulder 2-3 times a day.

   The other product that I am using is Deep Relief roll-on essential oil from Young Living. I am applying it every time I am finished massaging and heating my shoulder.

   That's a quick explanation of the products that I am using. Again, I do not have the copyright to these products, I am just a consumer trying to create a healing journal for myself.

Next post: Day 1-4

History

   I injured my shoulder 3 years ago as a senior in high school. I was in P.E. and we were playing volleyball that day. I had played volleyball my 7th-9th grade years and thought that I could still serve the ball as hard as I did back then. Well...I was definitely wrong. I heard about 3 big pops and was unaware of anything but my shoulder and the pain. I cannot even tell you if my ball made it over the net or not.

   I was in the middle of having several chiropractor appointments to fix my back, so I talked to him and never went to a doctor. He informed me that he assumed I tore either my posterior deltoid or my rotator cuff. Soon my shoulder didn't hurt as much and I felt better. I would get dull pain in it sometimes, but I thought it was from having both tendinitis and brucitis in it from my junior year when I threw shotput and discus in track.

   I took two years off from most physical activity besides dancing. I still had some random pain in my shoulder but nothing that ever hurt too bad so I never worried about it.

   I decided to try out for Colorguard in April of 2011. I made the team! It was so much fun until half-way through the season my shoulder was almost constantly in excruciating pain. I still thought that it was the brucitis and tendinitis, but after taking a trip to an athletic trainer, he said that he was pretty sure that it was my rotator cuff. He explained that he didn't think that twirling flags would injure it like I had and it was probably a previous injury that is flaring up so he asked me if I had injured it before. At first I said no, but as I sat there in his office thinking about it while having STEM and ice treatment on my shoulder, I suddenly remembered the volleyball event my senior year. He gave me some exercises and said to ice it. He gave me the option of doing the exercises at home or going into the REC during their hours. He didn't promise that the exercise would heal it but he said that it was worth a try before going to get an MRI to see what's going on in there. I went into him for about 2 weeks, and then decided to just do the exercises at home. That slowly trickled down to only doing the exercises when I was in pain. They have worked pretty well for taking away the pain instantly, but if I am not in pain and do the exercises, sometimes they put me in more pain.

   I decided that after Colorguard season was over, it was great that I had 3 weeks to rest. I decided to do Winterguard as well to try and keep my shoulder strong, but I would take it easy so that it could heal some too. One week into the new semester I started exercising. In my first workout, I did quite a bit of arm movement and after 15-30 minutes of that my fingers started going numb. This is when I knew that it hadn't healed even a little bit over the break. I also knew that Winterguard was not an option if I had any thought of doing Colorguard this fall. It is now April...and to this day if I do too much arm movement in my exercise classes my shoulder starts to hurt. And if I push through that pain...my fingers start going numb and my shoulder has a dull achy pain in it for the rest of the night. The only exercise that I have found that does not hurt it is Yoga and PiYo. Don't get me wrong...some of the movements still hurt really bad and I can't sustain them for very long, but it does not cause my shoulder pain for the rest of the night due to this activity.

   I was searching online to find ways to take rotator cuff pain away, when I found a book that I really wanted and sounded promising. My mom also gave me a small amount of Deep Pain essential oil to try on my shoulder. The oil took the pain away for about 5 hours at a time and I knew that I definitely wanted more of it.

   So here is the history of what has happened to my shoulder. I wanted to make this blog to keep track of my progress and also to hopefully help other people if they have this injury. I am not doing this to represent the essential oil, book, or any stretching products that I use. This is just for my personal gain so that I have my own healing journal. If you choose to read it, great! If you don't care, move on. It's up to you.

Next post: The products that I am using