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
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