Posts
33
Joined
9/14/2017
Location
Signal Hill, CA
US
Edited Date/Time
7/29/2021 7:19am
Hi
I can’t seem to find anything regarding this question. My shoulder blade is broken in half and my deltoid muscles are very painful when I try to lift my arm. Has anyone experienced this? I would think that the pain should be coming from my upper back and not directly coming from my shoulder muscles. My mri doesn’t really show any signs of shoulder muscle/tendon issues.
Thank you for your help.
I can’t seem to find anything regarding this question. My shoulder blade is broken in half and my deltoid muscles are very painful when I try to lift my arm. Has anyone experienced this? I would think that the pain should be coming from my upper back and not directly coming from my shoulder muscles. My mri doesn’t really show any signs of shoulder muscle/tendon issues.
Thank you for your help.
I ask because I am on the mend from a broken shoulder blade myself (happened in April, tagged a tree with my shoulder). Was misdiagnosed in the ER with a broken collarbone (the Dr. there thought a 10 year old previous break was a new one) and after multiple trips to the Ortho with x-rays, MRI and CT Scan he diagnosed an injury to the axillary nerve.
My pain was centered on shoulder/delts and I still have lingering numbness to the area. Also caused my delt and connected muscles to atrophy because the nerve wasn't firing.
Would bring this up with the Ortho the next time you see them. I had an EMG test that confirmed it. If that is the case, you'll want to find a solid physical therapy place to help get rehab started.
Best of luck getting healed up!
The Shop
At a decent enough range of motion that I can accomplish the tasks I need to like picking up my little ones and household chores. I have a daily stretching routing to keep the muscles loose and specific workouts I do at the gym to build strength back up and keep hitting the nerve to get it to come around.
It's entirely possible you just bruised the muscles in the area on impact and that's why you're still feeling pain there. As others have said, DO NOT push yourself without the guidance of a medial professional. Time and a rehab plan is what you need. I didn't start PT until a month after the injury and I was out of my sling.
Sounds very promising. Thanks for that. Do you think the harder you pushed your body, the better the results were? Are you back to your normal weights at the gym? Can you do most of the same exercises?
All the same exercises, range of motion, and sick 1 rep max PR's everyday Bro.
You'll be fine.
I still have pain in my whole right shoulder. It's kind of like a tingling burning sensation pretty much all the time. Actually sitting here typing this I can feel it. But I've also broken my shoulder 4 times. I go to the gym 5 days per week and shoulder day is obviously my least favorite. Rather than "bulking up" my shoulders I tend to do high rep low weight. It does help a lot compared to lifting heavy weights.
If it continues to bother you don't be afraid to seek physical therapy. I never did and I wish I had. My wife is a physical therapist and hearing the things she says, I could kick myself for not getting therapy.
Yeah it’s been two weeks since it happened and I just started riding but just on the cruiser to and from work. Not on the track yet. I don’t know how you did that.
How much weight are you doing for shoulders? Like 15lb lat raises? 30lb Arnold press? Something like that?
I wish my wife was a PT then she would give me a little credit for my pain.
Get yourself built up slowly in the gym after it's 100% healed. There's nothing wrong with using 5 lb weights and doing high reps to simply get that range of motion and stamina built back up.
Pit Row
At wk5 when you raced how did it feel at that point? Im sure there was probably still pain but were you able to push it a good amount?
I got an X-ray the day it happened. The idiot doctor said all the bones were completely fine. For the next week I did a lot a lot of pushing my arm thinking it was the muscle or something. I even had a 45 min Rolfing session that targeted just my upper back right where my shoulder blade is. If you know what Rolfing is then you know that is probably the worst thing you could do with a broken bone. The Rolfing was done three days after the injury. So a week later after getting and mri to see if my tendons were the problem (they weren’t) the new doc said my scapula was broken. From then on a put it in a sling. A few days after that I saw surgeon who suggested not to get surgery and also took another X-ray. The X-ray looked identical to the first one the day it happened. I don’t know if that was a good thing to see that. It convinced me that despite pushing my shoulder as hard as I could with a very fresh break, that I couldn’t really do any further harm. Of course I’m not getting on the dirt until it feels really close to 100%. I have another appointment in two weeks for more X-rays. It should be interesting.
Honestly, the biggest obstacle in my recovery was the trauma and scar tissue build up on my external rotator cuff muscles (infraspinatus and teres minor). As the surgeon and my PT pointed out, the fractures were basically bleeding all over the muscles until there was enough union, so the scar tissue was significant. Couple that with 5 weeks of immobilization and the range of motion was horrible, and I had no strength on external rotation. The progress initially was slow and frustrating, but the one thing that definitely accelerated it was getting back on the bicycle and getting my heart rate up. This really helps with muscle perfusion and cleaning out some of the damage. 13 months later, my left shoulder is about 95% of normal, however it looks like shit because I had a concurrent AC separation.
Good luck with your recovery!
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