8 months after shoulder Surgery...Symptoms are not getting better..Neck&arm pain?

[Rainman824]

So after reading all of these post I see that i am not the only one going through the trials and tribulations of shoulder surgery.

I am in law enforcement and injured my left shoulder (non dominant arm) back in early 2015 doing my job. after two months of physical therapy and an MRI, it was decided that I needed shoulder surgery. I ended up tearing a 1/4 of my labrum off of the bone and needed three anchors to re-attach it. I didn't start PT again for 5 weeks after the surgery(as per my Ortho). My orthopedic surgeon is a fantastic surgeon. I was prescribed a 10 day prescription for ******** and neproxin after the surgery.

Physical therapy after the surgery was slow and very painful. I was given 3 months off for my surgery and then put back to desk duty at work which is not as easy as everyone thinks because i still have prisoner interaction. I remember swatting a fly and almost breaking down into tears because the pain was just unbearable. I will give my Physical therapist a lot of credit, I have great ROM(range of motion). But I still can't sleep at night with out my shoulder popping

8 months after the surgery and my shoulder is still in consistent pain and the AC joint pops/clicks painfully every time i rotate my shoulder. I had a new MRI (arithogram) taken in October which showed some tearing in the rear of my labrum (but doesn't seem to bad) and didn't show really anything else. My Ortho recommended a second surgery to shave my clavicle bone down to attempt to stop the popping/clicking and to stop the pain. He also said that he would go in an clean up the shoulder. As of now i refuse to do another surgery because Its not a guarantee that it will fix anything, and what if while he's in there he does more damage then fixes. Also for anyone who has had shoulder surgery, the rehab sucks!!!!!

My current symptoms are chronic shoulder pain, tightness in the back of my neck where the shoulder meets (trapezoid), My shoulder gets pins and needles, Pops/clicks every time it rotates (its both loud and painful), and I started getting pain down my forearm and fingers especially my index finger which every now and then twitches uncontrollable. My law enforcement doctors don't think anything is wrong and have now put me back to full enforcement duty.

The only medications that I have is 800 mg of ibuprofen and a muscle relaxer which i don't think works. When the pain starts to get unbearable i have to have a cocktail or two to attempt to numb it. I don't like taking narcotics (pain killers) and I really don't want/like to use alcohol as a pain killer.

Any advice would be appreciated.

[sowilson]

Besides not resurrecting old threads, I would recommend that you get a second surgical opinion from another orthopedic surgeon. Find an orthopedic surgeon who works with athletes, they're easy to find as they tend to be team doctors for college and professional sports teams. If your current MRI-A shows a torn labrum then that will not heal on its own but requires surgery. You should still be doing PT. As for law enforcement duties, with a torn labrum you're at a very high risk of dislocating or subluxing your shoulder. A very simple scuffle with someone when doing your job and pop goes your shoulder. Unless your ROM and strength of your damaged shoulder are very, very close to your good shoulder, as well as your damaged shoulder being stable I wouldn't consider you go to go.