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Our user asked: "Hi Part of my job is moving pallets of floor tile. Some of this is done with a forklift, but occassionaly I have to move a pallet by hand. A situation in which I did this involved a pallet with about six or seven cases of tile each weighing about 40 lbs a piece. What I did was grab onto a post to the left of the pallet and pulled with my whole body with my right arm extended out to my side and down slightly, between 3-5 degrees. Now my shoulder is screaming. As I'm sitting here typing this if I reach out to move the mouse I'm in some pretty serious pain. When I go to sit on the floor with kids and reeach down to the floor in front of me to ease down to the floor it screams to the point that falling flat on my face starts to seem like a viable option. Without a decent diagram of the shoulder the pain appears to start at the front of the ball of the humerus and continues to the top of my shoulder directly above that, it also moves to the left from the the ball of the humerus. If you can if give some ideas of what my stupidy has done to my shoulder did two weeks before my family trip to Turcs&Caicos I would appreciate it. Thanks
Ask a PT Response: "It is difficult to determine what may be going on without physically examining you. From what you describe it could be a number of things ie. injury to the rotator cuff, injury to the biceps long head tendon, anterior deltoid, etc.. No matter what the injury, I would recommend to my patients to rest the shoulder and to maintain range of motion and strength at the shoulder as well. Some exercises which are generally recommended to my patients are wand exercises, self GH ROM exercises on the table, and GH isometrics. Sample video clips of how to perform these exercises can be found on the exercise video section on the CyberPT site. It is not recommended to my patients to work through these exercises if they are experiencing a high amount of pain with performing these exercises. Icing the shoulder afterwards is also commonly performed to help with decreasing pain and inflammation. If your condition hasn't improved it might be a good idea to see a PT as soon as possible to obtain the best plan of care appropriate for you and to get you in the right direction, especially since you will be going on vacation soon. Best of luck to you."
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