The pain started in she right arm a couple of weeks ago — a dull, throbbing ache that would at times shoot down from the shoulder to my elbow.
Figured it was muscle strain. Spent the day before lugging a 400mm lens and camera around the Parkway. It would go away. It didn’t. Got progressively worse and, by Thursday of this week, I could hardly move the arm. Pain my right leg as well.
Called the doctor. Come in, they said. Right away.
They ran a battery of tests and at the hospital in Galax.
Conclusion: Tendinitis in the arm along with tennis elbow and arthritis. Short-term solution: a shot of steroids in the arm, a brace on the elbow along with heat wrap therapy and a lot of Ibuprofen.
Long-term solution: Surgery. Rotator cuff surgery on the right shoulder, more surgery on hip and ankles.
If I were a horse Amy would have shot me a long time ago.
I got tendinitis in my legs about a year and half ago, from extreme over use. I can tell you from first hand experience it is a difficult thing to recover from and many doctors have a one size fits all cure, which was completely wrong for me. Their solution for me was a couple weeks of rest then I was sent to physical therapy, where due to well developed muscles in my legs, they put weights on my ankles and proceeded to put me thru extensive leg exercises. Totally wrong for me, as I found out the hard way I ended up far worse than when I had gone to therapy.
So I started doing research on the net. I found that tendinitis is when the little pieces of cartilage that attach the muscle to the bone become brittle, then hair line cracks develop in the cartilage. After about 2 or 3 weeks of rest and ice and not using the area, the cracks in the cartilage begins to heal and the pain disappears. However, at this stage the cracks are only sealed together with a white milky substance much like Elmer’s glue. And like Elmer’s glue the substance needs time to become solid and time to toughen. When you start using the area too soon before the tendon has had time the get tough again, the cracks are pulled open again, and usually the cracks get worse each time they are re-torn.
So the trick is to avoid too much use of the muscle that the torn tendon is attached to, until the tendon has had time to toughen up again. The time this takes can be from a few weeks to a few months, depending of your age and the over all condition of your tendons. If you pull that tendon to soon, you will have a flare up again of tendinitis. The hard part is knowing when it’s ok to use the tendon again, because once the pain is gone, doesn’t mean the tendon is tough enough to use yet.
It took me over a year to get over the tendinitis in my legs. But if you know ahead of time that you have to be careful of that area for a very long time, you will be ahead of the game. I didn’t, and did as I was instructed to do, which in at least 3 cases from 3 different doctors, was the exactly wrong thing to do. Good Luck!