Hello. 5 months ago I was doing side lateral cable raises and noticed something was wrong in my left arm, in particular the elbow area, but I figured it would go away. I continued working out but when I started doing preacher curls, the pain was so excruciating that I had to quit. But there was no loss of strength and nothing visually noticeable.
Ever since then, I’ve seen 3 doctors including a sports doctor, a sports physical therapist, a massage therapist, had an MRI, and none of which have been able to help me. The MRI, which looked at my elbow where I usually feel pain and discomfort, found no problems.
The good news is the pain, which was initially about a 9/10 when I injured it, is a now about a 1/10. The bad news is the pain just hasn’t gotten any better for the last 3 months, where I’ve mostly avoided the gym.
Right now all me or my doctors have been able to do is guess. The guess is that it is a very tiny tear either in my distal tendon or my bicep muscle.
Initially I assumed it was tendinitis, after doing rehab for tendinitis for a while, the condition didn’t change. The docs that looked at my MRI didn’t think I had tendinitis. X-rays didn’t find any problems with the bones.
It’s really frustrating. I still don’t know what’s wrong, and lifting seems to very slowly make it worse, whereas rest doesn’t seem to be making it better. What is even more frustrating is at times I will also feel pain near the shoulder, in the forearm, and on the bicep head itself, though usually the pain is in the elbow.
Any ideas what could be the problem and what to do? My doctors are literally shrugging at me at this point, I’m pretty much on my own with this. I’m running out of things to try.