hello everyone
When my symptoms were worse, evenings were bad. Muscles in my upper back would become very taught. If I was unable to avoid using my affected arm, the rhomboids where they insert into the thoracic spine would be really sore, rotator cuff muscles would be painful, muscles between ribs would be tight. I would go to bed hoping that there would be less pain in the morning. But lying in bed would be uncomfortable too. The uncomfortable feeling lying in bed was hard to describe. If I lay on my affected side my arm would go to sleep, if I lie on my other side it would feel like my shoulder was going to pop out. If I lie on my back I would get a sore neck and head ache. But there was something else, there was a feeling that continuing to lie there was doing some damage to some nerves. On a few occasions I awoke and while I was in a state of semi consciousness I could feel a pulsing feeling in my upper chest on the affected side and slightly into my arm. I had had this same feeling when, in the weeks after first injuring myself and I was still fitting roller shutters, if I lifted the roller shutter up to my chest and I was about to lift it above my head to fit it into the guides I would feel a pulse, pulse, pulse in the space between my chest and my arm.

Back to the semi conscious state, it was strange because the pulsing feeling would disappear if I tried to move. It was similar to awakening and hearing oneself snoring for a second or two but then when conscious, you adjust something to stop snoring. It was the same with the pulsing, waking meant something changed and the pulsing disappeared

What I have worked out (in my situation ) is that there was a cycle. When I lie in bed at night I was compromising the nerve which goes under my scapula and therefore when I woke up in the morning I would often have less scapular stability than the previous night. Then I would need to use compensatory shoulder muscles to stabilize my scapula during the day. However these muscles were not made to stabilize my scapula in this way so they became very sore. So by the evening my upper back and rotator cuff would be painful, so it was a relief to go to bed, but I couldn’t sleep because even though I was resting the sore muscles I was now compromising the nerve under my shoulder blade again which meant that the compensatory muscles were going to be even more sore the next day. Just to make matters worse as part of my rehabilitation I was put onto a gym program to strengthen my shoulder girdle. I tried to tell the rehabilitators that I could make the situation better if I put my affected arm in a sling. They said this could lead to frozen shoulder. I don’t think that they had any appreciation of the direction in which they were taking me. They would only see me for an hour every couple of days. There were many hours of ygbbcjdujfbbn!!! In between those hours. When I told them that I was having difficulty sleeping at night (in the context of what I have just described) I was given sleeping tablets which of course allowed me to sleep through compromising the nerve which goes under my scapula which meant less scapular stability which meant even more sore compensatory muscles etc.etc.

I have worked out that
1) if I can minimise using my affected arm in the first few hours after waking up I will improve my scapular stability for the rest of the day.(if I use it, it compromises the nerve even more in another way {bowstringing}) these hours are the vulnerable hours.
2)if I didn’t have to sleep I would probably have not become worse like I did.
3)the sooner I but my shoulder brace on for the day the better I will be

best wishes, towelhorse