Frozen Shoulder and TOS...interesting
 

As most of you know I have had a laft frozen shoulder for hmmm lets see 3 years now. Freaking annoying.

I have gained a good amount range back in terms of raising the arm and have decent internal rotation. But my external rotation sucks. its like the shoulder is beyond stuck and it burns and aches all the time. It spasms up all the time and creates these awful headaches. The doc says they are cluster headaches.

Anyway I have seen four orthos for the frozen shoulder including the one that gave me a cortisone shot that made this all worse. The cortison shot heightened a viral infection I ahad and interesting enough

Anyway fast forward and the shoulder has been progressively worse over the last year. Not really range of motion(except external) but pain etc.

So fast forward and I go see a physiatrist that I hear is good (actually trained under the sholder guy that gave me the bad shot) but this guy is all about avoiding surgery.

He does an ultrasound of the shoulder - not something that is done that often, most docs rely on mri's.

Anyway he can see the still frozen part and he also sees that the suprascpular nerve is swollen at the notch, ie impringed which really can't be seen on an mri.

So for all your frzen shoulder guys out there ask for an ultrasound and check out and see if your supracap nerve is part of the problem.

Can they do something non surgical for that?
Special PT or anything?

Hi,

I have TOS, and other nerve injuries. Both my shoulders are frozen despite therapy, and ultrasound.

Ah brain fog I forgot the most intersting part. The physiatrist said that the swollen and impinged suprascp nerve at the shoulder notch causes the trap muscle to spasm and.....pulls the 1st rib out of place, ie subluxes it and rolls the shoulder forward...ie the TOS connection to the first rib.

I am doing 6 weeks of PT for it and then it the nerve is still an issue they go in arthroscopically and snip a piece of tendon or muscle that is over the notch to release the nerve.

Think of the nerve stuck at the notch with as a V with a small piece of muscle laying over the top of the V. The nerve runs through the V so if swollen you can see how it can get stuck and not slide through the notch like it is supposed to be.

I will keep you all posted on progress.

I hope the PT works out, and if not then go for it.

stiff in general
 

when i broke my left shoulder i went to one week of pt to learn pulley stuff etc to unstick it. the theory was that actually going to pt was unnecessary and expensive if i could just learn it and then do it at home. although i also have a partially torn labrum they did not recommend surgery. although unstuck now it is not 100% either.

my big problem seems to be that i am stiff all over. yoga helps but many times i cannot even approximate the pose because of this. part of it is fat in the wrong places too.

I get the stiffness all over now too {54} even after sitting in a side leaning posture or with ankles crossed to the side...for 30 mins I have to stretch and realign myself..:(