Let me tell you a Story...

This story is about a girl who has had shoulder pain for 10 wonderful years, but never dared go see what was wrong for fear of what it may be...

This story is about me. It's true, since I was about 14-15ish. I've dealt with left shoulder pain. The pain would come and go, but as time has gone on I've found that the periods between pain are shorter apart and the times with the pain are longer. I've also noticed that when I'm pregnant it can get really, really bad. But like I stated earlier, I never dared get it checked out because I didn't want to fork over the money (there I said it).

But guess what? This year we hit our deductible (imagine that, with an infant in the NICU, who wouldn't?). Since that was the case Neil and I decided to get things fixed on our body, guess what my one and only thing was? Yep, you guessed it, my shoulder. The last few years, along with the pain, my left arm goes tingly, like it has fallen asleep, even clear down into my fingers. I can't sleep on my left side because it aggravates my arm and so on and so forth. But then the question came of who to go to. My mom (can you tell how amazing she is yet?) asked the orthopedic surgeon she works with and he said to send me in and he would see what he could do...so I went in. He had me do funny things with my arm and took x-rays...at the end of the day he said it looked as if my Trapezius muscle had chronic spasming and hasn't had time to rest in 10 flipping years. Simple solution, send me to a physical therapist.

Alas, the physical therapist...he did more funny things with my arm and finally found a solution to what is really going on in there. It's called Thoracic Outlet Syndrome , you should read about it. It fits all my symptoms to a T. So he gave me some stretches and exercises to do at home and I go in once a week for Astym therapy...it's not as pleasant as it sounds. It leaves me with bruises such as this on my shoulder.

So what's really going on. Long story short. My first rib is elevated for no unknown reason, which then causes the veins, arteries, and nerves that pass between my first rib and collar bone to become pinch, resulting in loss of blood flow and whatnot to my left arm. On top of that, it irritates the muscles and causes them to spasm, which them leads to them tightening up. This all leads up to the tingling sensation in my arm and hand because of the loss of blood flow, and shoulder pain because of the tight muscles. My range of motion in my neck the first day was atrocious. 

It's fun...now I'm just kicking myself for taking 10 years to get this crap fixed. Lesson learned, lesson learned.