Hi Jonathan,
I can help you -- your symptoms do sound like you have a nerve entrapment or impingement. I'm an Oral Surgeon and last year, I suffered similar or worse symptoms than what you describe, after I strained and compressed one of the vertebrae (at the C6 level) in my neck -- I had burning, pain and numbness from my shoulder blade, to my shoulder, then down my arm, it was awful!
Although I'm a surgeon, I'm an advocate of non-surgical treatment for musculoskeletal and neuromuscular injuries whenever possible. Of course, take anti-inflammatory pain relievers, use ice and do conservative physical therapy for the acute pain -- but this in and of itself is not going to release an entraped nerve.
I live in the San Diego area and when my problem occurred, I sought and received Active Release Therapy (ART) treatment from someone certified in ART in San Diego. This is not a well known type of physical and pain therapy (most Physicians are not aware of it) but it should be well known because IT WORKS.
ART originated in the US and a number of practitioners are Chiropracters but some are also physical therapists, and athletic trainers. The treatment seems similar to types of deep muscle work and it can hurt -- but that's actually a good thing, because while the ART therapist is working on you, they will be trying to reproduce your symptoms and when that happens, it means they have isolated the source of the problem and can then effectively treat it.
ART does what the name says, it helps release the nerve entrapment and when that happens, your get relief from your symptoms, Sometimes a significant amount of relief is achieved in just 1-2 visits (treatment is usually 20-40 minutes per visit) and in some cases, you need treatment once a week for a number of weeks or even months. The goal of ART is to eliminate the problem as quickly as possible and not to have you dependent on treatment(s) indefinitely. It took me 4-5 months of treatment 2-3 times/month, but I'm now symptom free.
Lucky for you, there are ART certified therapists in England and here is a link (from the ART website) of 5 ART certified providers in England:
http://www.activerelease.com/providerSe ... 8&strCity=
As long as you are healthy and have received a physical examination and diagnosis from your physician, my advice is that you should head straight to the ART therapist closest to you, and start getting better. The cost for ART treatment here in San Diego is about $50 for a 20 minute treatment and $90 for a 40 minute treatment. Here in the U.S., ART may not covered by insurance, but it's well worth the out of pocket cost to get better.
I hope this is helpful and I hope you get rid of this problem, using ART.
Dave
Dr. David Rolf
