Bad fall on LE arm...do I need to do anything?

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cowgal
cowgal Member Posts: 833
edited October 2015 in Lymphedema

I have been dealing with what I would consider manageable LE for about 5 years now. I need to wear my compression sleeve and gauntlet every day but it has for the most part stayed just a little bit bigger than my non LE arm. I don't have a pump or have any night garments. Yesterday, I had a pretty hard fall and my points of contact with the ground were my two new knees that I got in July and my LE arm was straight out to break the fall. My knees and my arm are all swollen. My arm is very sore and doing certain things with that arm are very painful. I'm pretty sure that nothing is broken and I am hoping that after a few days, it will start to feel better. I did MLD tonight and hope that will help but I am wondering if a trauma like this might make it difficult to get my arm back down to its pre fall size. Is there anything else I should be doing for it?

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  • carol57
    carol57 Member Posts: 3,567
    edited October 2015

    cowgal, falling on a straight-out arm is a common cause of shoulder injury, such as a rotator cuff tear. The pain would not necessarily be felt in the shoulder, as pain referred down to the arm instead of in the shoulder is quite common with tears. Pain with certain movements but not with others is another signal of possible shoulder damage. I hope you can get checked for that, so that if it is indeed a shoulder injury, a quick diagnosis offers a chance for non-surgical therapy (PT). MLD is a great idea, but I think you need to rule out an injury that's adding inflammatory swelling to your usual LE swelling. (Written by a woman who is recovering frorm shoulder repair surgery, sigh...)

    I'm so sorry you have to deal with this. Hugs...
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  • ChiSandy
    ChiSandy Member Posts: 12,133
    edited October 2015

    I once broke a fall with an outstretched right arm--and hairline-fractured the elbow, sprained the wrist and severely bruised my palm (took a week to determine it too was not fractured). At the time I was in a duo with a woman who had broken her left ankle. I was in a wrist brace and she was in a cast, non-weight-bearing and using a knee scooter. We had to travel to a music conference in rural Michigan. It was comical--we tag-teamed the driving. I worked the pedals and steered with my left hand while she turned the ignition key and shifted the floor-mounted transmission. We managed not to get pulled over--if we had, we’d have had some ‘splainin’ to do. So it might be a direct injury to the arm itself rather than referred shoulder pain....or both.

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  • AussieElaine
    AussieElaine Member Posts: 64
    edited October 2015

    Hi there, sorry to hear about your fall. I agree with the others that getting it checked is a good idea. I had a really bad fall a few weeks ago and also had my LE arm out to break the fall. Fortunately, nothing was broken except my front teeth, had the biggest black eye but arm was fine. Good luck😊

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  • hugz4u
    hugz4u Member Posts: 2,781
    edited October 2015

    Auzzie I am trying to learn to fall on anything but my le arm. Last year I fell on my knee and scraped a huge hole in it and it took 3 months to heal. ........but I saved my Le arm :)

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