Tennis Elbow

wildfreightess

wildfreightess

Well-Known Member
Please, someone tell me there is a solution that does not involve surgery. I have tried the following over the past 6 months:

1) Anti inflammatory drugs
2) Steroids (Dr. Rx)
3) Massage
4) The brace thingy
5) Rest
6) Ice
7) Heat
8) Stretching
9) Cross-fiber manipulation of the tendons in the arm
10) Ignoring the problem, hoping it will fix itself. It's not.

I'm at a loss. I'm in a great deal of pain and fear this is a permanent thing. Please help. I don't even play tennis.
 
wildfreightess said:
Please, someone tell me there is a solution that does not involve surgery. I have tried the following over the past 6 months:
1) Anti inflammatory drugs
2) Steroids (Dr. Rx)
3) Massage
4) The brace thingy
5) Rest
6) Ice
7) Heat
8) Stretching
9) Cross-fiber manipulation of the tendons in the arm
10) Ignoring the problem, hoping it will fix itself. It's not.
I'm at a loss. I'm in a great deal of pain and fear this is a permanent thing. Please help. I don't even play tennis.
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I was diagnosed with this three days ago. I lift and injured my left arm doing dumbbell curls several weeks ago, and stupidly, kept doing it.

How bad is yours? If I flip my palm up and twist outward (to the left) it hurts past the 90* point. I can't even hold our first class tray tables when setting it down (palm up, thumb and fingers clasp together). Tray doesn't weigh that much.

So far I'm on NSAID and doing small exercising with weights. I found a good source last night with some exercises using dumbbells, the doctors said yes you will feel pain at first. Mine said try to avoid anything where you grip tightly.

According to my doc, it can last upwards of 18 months before you are pain free.

Depending on the severity it might require surgery. From my understanding we have torn tendons. Tendons don't heal and grow back, you can just strengthen the other ones. Surgery is required for massive tears..

Over the summer I injured my Achilles tendon on my right foot, couldn't even set it down. Incredibly painful. Did a lot of stretching and took NSAIDs for two weeks. At the end of the two weeks I could at least walk again. It still hurts some now but I'm back to running 3 miles in 22:30, which is about where I was at before. My experience with that leads me to believe it's a long process to heal a tendon.
 
Oh no!! Yours sounds as painful as mine, only I think you got yours in a more athletic fashion than I did. I am not sure how mine came about, but suspect it's from lifting/lowering my flight case and rollaboard, as it seems to hurt more when I'm at work than when I'm home.

Mine is in my right arm. Shaking hands with people is excruciating, but I refuse to give them a "dead fish." I've heard that tendons don't heal very well because they don't get a lot of blood flow like muscles and bones do. So, I'm trying massage, stretching, and heating to encourage blood flow to happen. I want to add some strength training, but some mornings I can't even lift my coffee cup. It aches from my elbow, all the way down my forearm. But I really don't know what the heck I'm doing. I suppose I should just see a physical therapist and get some professional help!

If you injured your Achilles and still managed to get back to running, that gives me a little hope with my arm. A year and a half of dealing with this crap is better than a lifetime, I suppose, I just wish I knew what I did to injure the thing, so I could begin the healing process! I'll let you know if anything I'm doing seems to help.

Good luck!
 
wildfreightess said:
Oh no!! Yours sounds as painful as mine, only I think you got yours in a more athletic fashion than I did. I am not sure how mine came about, but suspect it's from lifting/lowering my flight case and rollaboard, as it seems to hurt more when I'm at work than when I'm home.

Mine is in my right arm. Shaking hands with people is excruciating, but I refuse to give them a "dead fish." I've heard that tendons don't heal very well because they don't get a lot of blood flow like muscles and bones do. So, I'm trying massage, stretching, and heating to encourage blood flow to happen. I want to add some strength training, but some mornings I can't even lift my coffee cup. It aches from my elbow, all the way down my forearm. But I really don't know what the heck I'm doing. I suppose I should just see a physical therapist and get some professional help!

If you injured your Achilles and still managed to get back to running, that gives me a little hope with my arm. A year and a half of dealing with this crap is better than a lifetime, I suppose, I just wish I knew what I did to injure the thing, so I could begin the healing process! I'll let you know if anything I'm doing seems to help.

Good luck!
Click to expand...

I injured my achilles using an elliptical machine. The tendon (I don't believe) wasn't torn just irritated significantly. I would think that is the reason yours hurts. Repetitive motion is bad and inflames the tendon.

If that is the case, I would do what I did for it. Prescription NSAID (meloxicam is what I'm on) for two weeks and use the cream if you have it (I don't but am getting some for my arm). You don't want to take NSAIDs long term, I hardly ever take medicine and it's bothering me being on them for 14 days! Reduce the use of the arm, I was doing fine the last few days and used it a lot last night using the computer keyboard, and it has a dull pain now.

The docs I go to are sports medicine people. They work on Duke and UNC players. The paperwork I have shows to ice it not use heat. 20-30 mins 3-4 times daily. Do stretching exercises, first without weight then with. Above all his recommendation was to not do anything that required you to tightly grip. The objective is to keep the inflammation down. Use your other arm to move your flight case while it still bothers you!

Go to an orthopedic office.
 
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I worked at a lumber yard and had it in both elbows. The only thig that worked for me was completely limiting lifting and really taking it easy for about 90 days. The shot made it much worse, and going back to hardcore to early brought it back on quickly.
 
A sports medicine doctor and a physical therapist that specializes in sports injury are a good place to start. I injured my achilles tendon recently and both of those people started me on stretching exercises. Personally, I try to stay off drugs of any sort. The inflammation is a healing response from your body and stopping it will only prolong repair (IMO). I also found a lot of videos and information from other people on the internet when I searched for mobility. I'm sure if you type in "tennis elbow mobility", you'll find some helpful stuff....My achilles took almost 3 months to heal enough for exercise, but I still have to make sure I stretch and manipulate the area before and after I exercise..
 
The advice I hear the most is rest and less use. You might benefit from strengthening and stretching exercises that target pulling a big load off the tendon(s). I would go as far as getting some advice on technique.

A couple summers ago, I added a 2 minute plank to some of my strengthening exercises, 3 days a week. Just doing that caused me to overuse a muscle in my lower back and the flight case thing started. It even became uncomfortable to sit in the seat for a one hour flight. I backtracked and narrowed it down to the planks. After a few weeks no planks, the back pain disappeared. So, it works both ways. I suspect technique and proper rest played a huge role.
 
I'm attempting to pack less in my rollaboard and use both arms to lift and lower my heavy flight case into and out of the cockpit. Short of staying home for 18 months (which is out of the question), I don't know what else to do, as lugging the flight case is the most athletic thing I'm doing now.
 
wildfreightess said:
I'm attempting to pack less in my rollaboard and use both arms to lift and lower my heavy flight case into and out of the cockpit. Short of staying home for 18 months (which is out of the question), I don't know what else to do, as lugging the flight case is the most athletic thing I'm doing now.
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How is it feeling now? Did you ever go to the doctor? Mine is healing nicely (so far, knock on wood). It's still tender at first but I can at least do dumbbell curls now, and when I get going there is no pain as long as I stay on the lighter side.

I think the meloxicam really helped with the swelling. I also do arm exercises where I am strengthening the forearm in a way that doesn't put strain on the particular tendon that I injured. I'm hoping this helps take the strain off the injured part and helps it heal better.
 
Tennis elbow and other similar joint use injuries are frequently caused my muscle tightness and imbalances.

Yes, of course, rest, but as it starts to feel better, start a regular mobility routine. Massage, stretching, and really learning the root cause and not focusing on pain relief.

Also, easy on the curls @wheelsup, it may be what caused yours! Recommend sticking to a more compound movement for biceps, like full-extension pullups. The more you isolate a single muscle in an unnatural way, the more likely you are to cause tightness/aggravation.
 
wheelsup said:
How is it feeling now? Did you ever go to the doctor? Mine is healing nicely (so far, knock on wood). It's still tender at first but I can at least do dumbbell curls now, and when I get going there is no pain as long as I stay on the lighter side.

I think the meloxicam really helped with the swelling. I also do arm exercises where I am strengthening the forearm in a way that doesn't put strain on the particular tendon that I injured. I'm hoping this helps take the strain off the injured part and helps it heal better.
Click to expand...

Well.... It's still the same. I haven't done anything more athletic than lifting my rollaboard into the overhead since September (and I'm trying to be careful when I do that), but I haven't done much to rehabilitate it, either. I went to the doctor, and all he did was tell me how to wear a brace. He gave me some steroids and told me to come back if it didn't feel better. This was in December. I still hurt, but didn't go back. It seemed a waste of time.

I'm beginning to think I'm going to have this issue forever. I'm adapting. In other words, I'm giving up.
 
wildfreightess said:
Well.... It's still the same. I haven't done anything more athletic than lifting my rollaboard into the overhead since September (and I'm trying to be careful when I do that), but I haven't done much to rehabilitate it, either. I went to the doctor, and all he did was tell me how to wear a brace. He gave me some steroids and told me to come back if it didn't feel better. This was in December. I still hurt, but didn't go back. It seemed a waste of time.

I'm beginning to think I'm going to have this issue forever. I'm adapting. In other words, I'm giving up.
Click to expand...

Seek out a sports medicine doctor.

For example, this is the place I went:
http://www.raleighortho.com/

They can evaluate the extent of the injury, it's possible you may even need a structured physical therapy program or even surgery.

Mine was pretty bad in December. If I flipped my palm upward, I couldn't hold anything. I've done about 6 weeks of my own sort of rehabilitation program using the sports doc's guidelines and am getting there, it's 10x better than what it was.
 
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