6 months and I'm still in the same place! Advice welcome

[goobermor]

As some of you may remember, a while back I got swelling in the inner portion of my elbow joint. After going to the doctor he diagnosed it as tendinitis (golfers elbow, eventhough I dont golf ). Before going to the doc, I tried aspirin to relieve the swelling, which my doctor said was pretty useless, so he put me on relafen (generic for nabumetone, a NSAID).
After all a few months of this, along with icing regurarly, I was seeing no progress. I was then referred to occupational therapy, where I recieved cortisone by way of electrical stimulus. From what I was told, this method does not put nearly as much anti-inflamatory medicine into the affected area. Again, there was no change in my condition, as the inner area of the elbow joint still had swelling. It should be noted that I have almost no pain, but the swelling has persisted for 6 months now without going down. What's really irked me is that I've had to discontinue weight lifting as both my primary physician and the occupational therapy doctor strictly forbid it.
Now I am being referred to physical therapy, and I don't want to end up with another 6 months of wasted time. Does anyone have some suggestions as far as treatment, questions I should ask the doctor, or maybe some type of tendon scan (MRI?) that I should look into getting?

[steveo]

I've been going to a similar problem. I went to the Doctor and he have some shots into my joint( I have it on my bicept, tricept and pec) it didn't do much and I had it done a second time and I took 4 weeks off. When I started lifting again it still hurt and I got upset. I started lifting really light weight and my problematic arm would get tired fast, so I kept at it it's been 3 weeks now and I think the light weight had help, because it doesn't hurt much and I can lift a little more. I would try lifting lift to build the strenght on the injuried joint and hopefully make the pain go away.

This is just my opinion and what i've experienced

[goobermor]

Thanks for your opinion steveo, all advice is welcome

Well my father went to his physical therapy doctor today, ironically enough for an elbow problem (tennis elbow). I gave the doctor a brief description of my situation and he said it might be bursitis, which is originally what I thought it was. I was a bit stunned when my primary care physician told me it was tendonitis.

I have an appointment next week, so hopefully it will go well. He said to my father that he usually treats bursitis by draining the bursa sac then giving the patient medicine (I assume a NSAID type of oral mediciation) or an injection.

[SquareHead]

Maybe you should go to your fathers physical therapist. Even if you have to come out of pocket at least you may feel better and to me that would be worth it.

[drew]

Find yourself another doctor. It sounds like something much more serious than tendonitis. Get a second opinion before you go any further.

[goobermor]

Yep, going to his PT on tuesday to see whats going on. He said that if it is bursitis that the type of treatments I've received so far would yeild no results (which is exactly whats happened so far....nothing heh).

Luckily, I've babied the elbow so far, which has kept it down to a nagging minor injury (not even experiencing pain, just swelling).

Its hard to stay out of the gym when your addicted to it. Its a completely different lifestyle; I feel like I have less energy, less motivation to do things, and its even affected my mood.