How to Tell if you Have a Shoulder Tear
Having a shoulder tear can be quite painful, but it might not be immediately clear when you get one if you have just sprained your shoulder. The degrees of pain involved in the two make them difficult to distinguish. However, leaving a shoulder tear alone for too long can lead to other complications that you are best off avoiding. What follows are a set of tips for figuring out if you need to make an appointment to find out if you have a shoulder tear.
Warning: What follows is general advice about shoulder tears and not as diagnosis of your specific condition. If you are at all in doubt about your condition, you should make an appointment with your physician and have it checked out.
Injuries to the Shoulder
You can injure your shoulder in several different ways. Perhaps you spent Thanksgiving throwing the old pigskin around with the kids and felt a sudden pain. Or maybe you play tennis every Sunday and were practicing your serve and didn’t’ feel anything until the next morning when you got up for work. A shoulder tear can happen anytime when you put any strain on your shoulder, though most commonly it involves overstraining during some kind of a rotating motion.
Treatment Right After the Injury
Your first actions just after you injure your shoulder can make a big difference in how much time it takes you to recover from a shoulder injury. The first thing you should do just after an injury is to stop the activity you were engaged in. If you were playing tennis or throwing the football around, you should call it a day. Don’t try to play even in a limited capacity. Even though you may have injured your shoulder during your service motion doesn’t mean that you won’t make the injury worse just in the course of swinging at the ball.
The next step is to ice your shoulder so you avoid or lessen inflammation. Put some ice inside a plastic bag and either apply it directly to your shoulder or wrap towels around it and then place it onto your shoulder. Do this for about twenty minutes. You will want to repeat this twice a day for the next couple of days. This can help with pain as well.
After your ice treatment the first day, look to wrap up your shoulder so that it is tightly pressed to your body. This type of tight wrapping will help give your shoulder the extra support it needs to heal more quickly.
You will, of course, want to take it easy on your shoulder for the next week or two. If you play weekly sports, the next weekend might b e a good time to sit out. Even running or biking can cause extra stress to the shoulder and make your injury worse.
Observation Period
About an hour after your injury, you should pay careful attention to what you body is telling you. If the pain you feel is intense and does not fade or if despite putting ice on your shoulder it continues to swell, this is a good sign that you should go to a physician. If the pain starts to spread, you feel faint, or start to have trouble breathing you should contact your doctor or go the emergency room. If you start to lose feeling in your fingers then you should go doctor.
If any of the above happens during the next week, seek help. You should also seek help if the pain remains steady (though bearable) for more than a day. If after a few days you still don’t feel like you are getting better go in to see your doctor.
Treatments for a torn shoulder vary widely depending on the severity and location of your tear. Sometimes, a doctor might simply recommend not using that arm for a few days until it heals, while at others you physician might recommend surgery. The key, however, is taking proper care of your shoulder when you first get injured and then seeing your doctor as soon as possible so that you avoid complications.