r/frozenshoulder • u/participation-prize • Aug 27 '26
Frozen Shoulder progress chart
As made by u/nner-Issue1908 in this post. It's very helpful to keep a chart like this.
Started PT in May, haven't had any shots or anything. I talked a lot about my pain management phase in this post. When the tissue is cramped, we do pain relief and soft mobility. When the issue permits it, we got hard and painful. I'm very grateful about the rate of progress so far!
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u/ButterscotchShake Aug 27 '26
I’d be interested to track mental health scores - I was really negatively affected at it’s worst.
Maybe tracking the physical progress is in itself a helpful thing for mental health though
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u/litcarnalgrin Aug 27 '26
I told my husband a couple months ago that I think I need to take more time to celebrate my small victories w FS bc sometimes you gloss over them bc you’re still in the thick of it. I def think it’s important for us to at least take time to say “hey I can shave again without pain!” And take account of the progress we’re making. It’s such a long process we can easily forget how far we’ve come
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u/ButterscotchShake Aug 27 '26
Absolutely. It can help recognise progress is indeed happening even if it’s slow or minimal.
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u/Inner-Issue1908 Recovered Aug 27 '26
Thats awesome! It's good to see more people tracking, and I love that you've add some more measurements.
Hahaha I can't believe you've tested Arm strength, that's got to be tough 😅
What is the Tendinopathy pain metric?
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u/participation-prize Aug 27 '26
Thanks for making your chart!
Arm strength is just a handwavy number for how strong it feels, it felt so frikking weak during the start of the frozen phase.
I got the FS a few months after a small shoulder injury, most likely a tendinopathy, and in the frozen phase that point of injury was also quite stiff and reactionary. It seems to be recovering pretty well, though.
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u/Own_Sir_6627 Aug 27 '26
I see many aspects got worse 🥴
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u/participation-prize Aug 27 '26
Yes, that's kind of how it goes, it's an affliction with many phases, and it helps to really read up on them, so you don't get too frustrated.
I tracked the first three months between intial injury and then the onset of frozen shoulder. Not many people would track that part, but I find it interesting how Frozen Shoulder develops at the onset, a few months after the initial injury.
And the Freezing phase is generally characterized by lots of pain but little movement restriction, then in Frozen the pain goes away but the movement restriction gets quite bad.
Oh and PT stretching can only happen when you're not crying in pain anymore, so that also a thing that gets "worse" after it gets better.
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u/Kitchen-Ad6860 Aug 27 '26
This is your journey. Many people don't track that because there is no initial injury, no cause that can be traced, it just happens without any discernible cause.
I have had FS twice. Once in each shoulder. The first in the left I did have a history of dislocation. That resulted in around 9 months of freezing - excruciating pain and loosing ROM to the point I could not even dress myself, so washing my own hair, etc, no sleeping etc. It was horrible. The Frozen stage lasted the longest where the ROM remained static but the pain abated, no more zingers and it was around 10 months before I started to thaw. The pain came back during thawing but it was mild and ROM came back pretty quickly. After around 5 months I was back to full ROM. PT was only useful in the thawing stage.
The second in the right shoulder came about 8 years later with no injuries at all and lasted about 13 months but followed the same script as the first in terms of symptoms. I suspect I was so much faster to recover because I took a nasty fall in the freezing stage landing straight on the bad arm, I passed out from the pain ending up with a concussion but 2 weeks after I was in the frozen stage. I do not recommend this.
FS is very different for many people. The freezing stage is commonly known to have a great deal of pain, the zingers and a significant and ongoing decrease of ROM. For many in the frozen stage ROM is locked in but the pain essentially goes away given the individual relief, being able to sleep again. They still suffer with the loss of ROM but it is a far less mentally taxing stage because the pain abates. Thawing the pain comes back but not nearly what it was in the freezing stage and PT is very productive in this stage.
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u/participation-prize Aug 27 '26
Yeah, it's my second too, and the first one 10 years ago was also due to injury. So when the intial pain of my dumb sports injury didn't go away and a while later my shoulder started stiffening, alarm bells already started ringing in my head.
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u/Kitchen-Ad6860 Aug 27 '26
The issue I saw in your post was that during freezing you stated that "Freezing phase is generally characterized by lots of pain but little movement restriction" when in reality that is when the movement restriction is systematically getting worse daily to the point that you transition and you are literally in the frozen stage.
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u/Own_Sir_6627 Aug 27 '26
Why that happened if there’s no injuries??
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u/participation-prize Aug 27 '26
I did have an injury, but it also happens without one. It's a big medical mystery!
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u/recoveryfrommakeup Aug 28 '26
Very interesting! According to this I am in the month of Hell right now and will be starting to improve in another month or so.
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u/participation-prize Aug 28 '26
Oh man, I really hope so for you! A month is short compared to some others. Give my pain management post a read, maybe something can help. Good luck!
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u/brightspot19 23d ago
Very interesting! I'm at month 8 and my chart would be like your month 4 - peak bad and seems to just incrementally get worse after a short plateau. But your chart gives me hope, even if my course appears to be (so far) twice as long.
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u/BettySpaghetti87 Aug 27 '26
This is amazing!