Greetings!
I want to start by saying this site is a GREAT resource and you are a very generous person to put your time into it as you are a professional and probably spend your day hearing the same sort of things over and over. So, in advance, THANKS!
Anyway, I'll try to keep this as short as possible while including all the relevant tidbits. One morning in August 2008 I woke up to find my left shoulder in considerable "aching" pain, so much so that I couldn't put my shirt on. This seemed to come out of nowhere, I hadn't had any previous shoulder pain, mild or severe, and in the previous days I had been climbing easy, vertical routes well below my limit, setting up top-ropes for beginners. I went to my campus's health clinic and, while they didn't say what I did to myself, they recommended time off. So I took the whole fall and winter off ( I needed a break anyway...).
So in March it's been many months since I've climbed and I assume whatever happened has to be fixed, and I started climbing again. About a month in, once I start getting back on harder boulder problems, the pain comes back, but more of a deep, dull ache and I could tolerate it and climb through it initially but it definitely didn't feel good or right. I would wake up some mornings with limited range of motion and general weakness with flexion and abduction above my chest. So once it became obvious it wasn't going away I threw the towel in again, for about 4-5 months this time.
Instead of jumping back into climb, whether easy or hard, I thought it would be prudent to strengthen my shoulder first. So using a Theraband I did general shoulder exercises, nothing over-the-top or over-aggressive. And that flared up my shoulder pain/ ache. Being pretty frustrated, I gave up until now (4-5 months later, or 1.5 years after first symptoms). The weather is getting nice and I'd really like to climb again, so I decided to try strengthen my shoulder as softly/ slowly as possible, so I started doing Codman Exercises/ shoulder circles every once in a while. I kept it very light/ easy, not even doing them until I felt tired, but that STILL flared up my shoulder.
SO... do I have something more serious going on than I think? Or will I just have to rehabilitate through the initial pain? Any advice/ insight you have would be greatly appreciated. I think I should also mention during my "rest" months my shoulder felt fine- full range of motion, etc. The only other abusive activity I do is mountain biking, which can be very abusive indeed, but never really flares my shoulder up. Separately, last summer I was diagnosed with a kidney disorder that is worsened with Ibuprofen- do you have any anti-inflammatory substitute recommendations that are kidney friendly? I used to rely on "vitamin I" heavily. Thank you thank you thank you!
-Alex
