I am another ex-sufferer. I can spot it a mile off in others: eg they start to pour you a cup of coffee from a small coffee pot, then quickly change hands, having forgotten how painful it is. And they walk rather cautiously, because, as we all know, the slightest clumsy knock leaves us paralysed with pain, mouth silently open, trying not to cry out.
Dr referred me to a physio. I watched carefully what she did and after two expensive sessions did it for myself (not the electric thingy, of course). One thing she suggested was holding a broom stick in both hands and using the good arm to push the other one around. Mad, impossible movements like stepping over it and bringing it up and down over my head.......
One of the most useful exercises I invented as a result was to throw a rope over a strong curtain pole and attach it to the bad arm and to a foot. Then I tried to relax the arm completely (not easy) and the foot pushed gently down and up to raise and lower the arm fractionally above the movement it could make by itself. The idea was to gently free the mass of muscle that I imagined to be jammed together.
People told me that the worst thing was to hold the arm close to the body, protectively and stiffly. The muscles contract and go rigid. You have to TRY to swing the arm naturally. Hours of walking about trying to swing the bad arm....."The Ministry of Silly Walks" (Monty Python).
The bad news is that I got it in the second shoulder just as the first recovered and had to endure another 2 years of trying to free it. That made about 5 years of misery. I read somewhere that once you have had it, it NEVER returns. I choose to believe that.
It is SO disabling, I agree. Everything you do, from driving to housework to dancing to (in my lucky case) gorilla trecking in Uganda becomes 10 times more complicated and difficult and slow.
In Uganda, the ranger would try to help me up muddy cliffs by yanking on the wrong arm - I had to explain, and he was incredibly kind after that, carrying my backpack and carefully choosing the good arm every time I was struggling.
Throughout those years I was an illustrator, and as a right-handed person, could barely lift the paintbrush, or move it across the table to pick up more paint.
I am very sympathetic to all who have this awful condition, and can only say that it wears off eventually. Even now, when I find myself lifting my arms vertically above my head to remove clothes or to reach for something high up, I think back to the days when this was completely impossible, and am grateful for freedom from pain. Those were dreadful years.
