Shoulder/Arm Pain

[coperberr]

A little over a year ago I was struck by a car and pinned between two vehicles. My left shoulder bore the brunt of the injury and because my shoulder was wedged in the frame of the rear door of one of the vehicles, no bones were broken. After much physical therapy I felt I could put it behind me and signed off with the insurance company. Perhaps I was too hasty, although this may not be related. Last week I had a manicure and as my nails were drying, the young lady massaged my back. She was very strong and it felt good at the time. However, later that day I began to notice that my left shoulder felt a little sore. Very gradually the soreness got worse. Now it is about six days later and I have been up two nights in a row. My upper back, left shoulder and entire left arm, including my hand is very painful. The pain seems to start in my shoulder joint and radiate out from there. My skin seems supper sensitive to the touch on my arm and occasionally I feel a slight tingling in my left hand. I've been taking OTC extra strength aspirin and few pain meds left over from some minor surgery I had two weeks ago that have gotten me through but the pain has brought me to tears upon occasion. I don't know who to see -- a neurologist or an orthopaedist? Has anyone suffered from this type of pain?

 

[Jam Zilla]

what i would do first is simply see your primary doc for an eval and a referral for an MRI of that area. did they ever actually DO an MRI at the time of the accident just to check ALL of the soft tissue areas like muscle and tendons? that really should have been done then if it wasn't. but getting one now would at least be able to really show what may be going on in there now. in some cases, tho your shoulder was more the involved injured area, your c spine could have also been involved too. just because of the mechanism of the injury like you suffered can in some cases cause that impact to kind of spread out in certain ways and absorb the energy as well. the c spine is just kind of vulnerable to injury if this hit actually casued a sudden movement of the neck too.

the thing is, the way those nerves actually run from that c spine area then thru that shoulder and then down into the hand, in some cases, you can have kind of 'overlapping' types of symptoms? seeing what is going on actually in both the c spine and the shoulder/rotator cuff area really would be ideal. but you really do need that shoulder more deeply looked at with at least an MRI at this point. if you never actually had one at the time of that accident it is even more crucial it gets done now. it just sounds from what you have described that you now DO have some level of nerve affectation going on. its going to take that deeper scan to really be able to tell just what things are looking like within that area. just see what does or does not actually show there. that would kind of dictate any further steps from there. i wish you luck with this. please do keep me posted, FB