Beating a "Frozen Shoulder" Diagnosis in 10 Days

Advance Note: This post is for self reference later on, and maybe story telling purposes. I may have gotten lucky, or I might have done the right things with the right caretakers. But it worked, I am ecstatic, so writing down what happened.

 

For a little while this August we had a rougher time. Rougher than "just" a global pandemic and working from home with school-age kids and a 9 months-old baby to care for. Surprising baseline, right? 

Now, we are doing veeeery well - thank you for asking! Grandma Tammy is visiting and things are smooth and happy. But the ill-fated conjunction of many things at once over a few weeks, combined with longer-term reduced self-care due to baby and pandemic times, triggered the surprisingly painful episode in today's blog post.

How did it start? In short, Greg was taken out of commission due to surgery (he's fine now!) for over two weeks. He was strongly forbidden from lifting the baby, plus extremely tired and lying down for many days in a row, which left me as a "temporarily single parent". Moreover, I now had a fourth child since I was quite worried about him as well.

As a result, I likely over-extended myself and got to pay the cost.  

The long term causes were likely my poor sleep since last November (baby waking up at night, other two kids wake me early mornings) and lack of regular strength exercises since March when everything shut down. Then, in a stronger burst more recently: working odd hours on the computer, hunching posture, breastfeeding in odd places throughout the house so that I can be there for all three kids, and insufficient self-care while Greg was recovering.

This unhealthy activity cocktail probably affects most stay-at-home moms on a regular basis - giant shout-out to you, hard-core Moms! And it really did a number on me: my shoulder locked up, causing extremely sharp pain when trying to move it at all.

It took three whole days of seeing me with a useless left arm, until Greg called it: You're not getting better, you need to see a doctor. He set up a virtual call for Sunday night.

Diagnosis and Prognosis

Diagnosis was easy, the doctor watched me attempt several motions to the best of my ability, while cringing in pain. The "best" of my ability was, shall we say, the worst: my arm was lifting only about two inches away from my body in all requested directions. It would mechanically not go any higher, irrespective of ignoring the pain. 

The doctor sighed and said:

- What you have, my dear, is what we call a "frozen shoulder".

[at this point Greg, off camera, gives a very uncharacteristic gasp ... then whispers "you're screwed!"]

- It will take a while to get better, but it will get better. The good news is that there's nothing broken, you just need to get that arm moving and push through the pain. Anti-inflamatories and pain relievers like Advil are useless, but you can try warm packs.

It will take you several months to get past this. That is, if you do all the physical therapy exercises and keep up with it, you'll get most of that arm motion back.

After many incredulous questions back and forth, as the news was sinking in, we learned that this type of injury takes 3-6 months to get better. Can't lift the baby for at least a month (not safely, at least). How do I nurse? it's been really hard these past four days, now there will be months of this?!!

I got really motivated.  I can't afford this, not right now, it's plainly unacceptable. All follow-up internet searches seemed even worse: the three healing stages take months each, up to 3 years (mayoclinic on adhesive capsulitis). 

Instead, I decided to tackle this as an army general would:

• Throw everything you've got at it.
• Be aggressive, unforgiving and unyielding to the pain.
• Get help from your allies.
• Maintain focus, sustain effort for as long as your supply chain will last.
• Win.

The First 5 Degrees.

That first night was hell.

Knowing that nothing's broken, just a matter of extreme stiffness, helped my determination. I can't hurt it more if I stretch it! So I spent most of the night - over 5 hours by the clock - pushing the arm outward away from my body and "breathing into it" like you do in yoga stretches.

In all the years I've known Greg, I've questioned his extraordinary ability to not think of anything when truly relaxing. My brain does not work that way. Every time I've tried, thoughts would inherently push their way through my "meditation wall" and get me distracted and pondering again about work, or school, or life. The most I've cleared my mind and been present was during active guided meditation in a class, where a speaker was actively keeping us in the moment. Even then I remember my brain interrupting, and me having to gently guide those thoughts back out.

Well, this night I had a revelation. Pain.

I could finally not think of a single thing outside of pain. Pain was my breath, my heart beat, the blood running through my veins, the tense tendons grappling for control, the muscle strings straining and screeching each with its individual small voice but together forming a deafening choir. Pain. Hours of it, nothing else but it, just pain over pain in an infinitely layered desert of pain.

Yet my awareness was here, my mind was present.  So I'll go ahead and call it a blessing - my very first successful long meditation, guided by pain. That's one way to do it.

In the morning I had gained my very first 5 degrees of shoulder mobility.

The Next 10 degrees.

What followed next was my masterplan, which seemed hopeless at first. I called in the Allies: acupuncturist, chiropractor and physical therapists. I scheduled one day with each, in a rotating tandem formation, paired with exercises throughout the day to keep breaking down the locked tissue. 

Acupuncture with cupping and electrostimulation of the muscles was the first day, and it hurt like how Samuel L. Jackson would say it. The cupping technique was the old-school glass cups and actual fire, like they used to do at my grandmas to "draw out the cold". In this case, the goal was to break down and stretch the fascia while moving the stagnant blood in the tissues. I got some awesome dark bruises out of it.

When I got back to the car, I was able to put my hand on the steering wheel! I had driven here slowly, one-handed because my left arm would not lift at all. P.S. Don't tell on me! it was safe enough, I was hugely cautious.

After that first day I started keeping track of the improvements by how high I could move my arm up on the steering wheel on the drive back. 

Note: This is just for demonstration purposes. For actual driving, you never turn your hands all around - always use the clock hands driving.

Here's the progression:

Frozen Shoulder Progress Day 1: Acupuncture, electrostimulation of the rotator cuff and deltoids, glass/fire cupping on/around the rotator cuff.

Frozen Shoulder Progress Day 2: Chiropractor: targeted vibration muscle relief, cupping with silicone suction cups on the back of the shoulder plate, taping.

Frozen Shoulder Progress Day 3: First physical therapy session: assessment, massage, door pulley exercises at multiple angles.

Frozen Shoulder Progress Day 4: Acupuncture: more intense cupping, now that pain had subsided so it was bearable, electrostimulation of rotator cuff.

Frozen Shoulder Progress Day 5: Physical therapy: working on outward rotation; started gentle strengthening/motion exercises with rubber exercise bands.

Frozen Shoulder Progress Day 8: Last session of chiropractor, after two weekend days of home exercises. Most of the motion is already back, but cannot raise my arm higher than chest level. Vibro-massage helped, but from now on work on strenghtening and come for chiro only as needed.

Frozen Shoulder Progress Day 9: Last acupuncture session, electrostimulation on both shoulders muscles because by now the other arm had been overcompensating and starting to hurt.

Frozen Shoulder Progress Day 10: Physical therapy: the assessment showed most mobility was back.

The therapist had not seen such a fast progression before, so she asked questions and took notes of what I had done to achieve it, which is why I'm writing this post - notes for posterity. 

I got more advanced strengthening exercises with rubber bands that I would do regularly at home. I had one more check-up a week later and things were going well so we stopped further sessions. The very last few degrees of motion took about two weeks of relaxed/irregular exercises. And life went right back to normal, except that now I'm watchful so this stuff doesn't happen again...