Medical Questions. Any Sports Medicine Doctors here?

I am asking some general questions on the right way to approach fixing an elbow injury I suffered last July. I will try to make a VERY long story short, I hurt my elbow pretty bad playing golf in July 2004.

I was diagnosed with a Pronator sprain and was sent to P.T. for 5 weeks. After 2 weeks, I was able to turn my wrist over w/o any pain but there was still significant pain in my forearm. My therapist believed I also suffered Radial Tunnel Syndrome.

I returned to my Sports Med. Dr. and he agreed with her assessment so he sent me back for another 5 weeks of PT. There was NO change. The 1st week of Nov. I had a cortisone shot and was fitted with a wrist brace to stabilize the nerve in my elbow.

After 2 weeks, the daily intense pain was gone but I still was sore after anything physical related like if I was typing at work w/o the wrist guard..I would get sore for a while. I saw the doctor again 5 weeks after the shot and told him I was at 85-90% where I was < 50% before the shot. He felt that was a good sign and said that time should heel the rest of the pain because he really wanted to avoid doing the surgery.

Well we are now 3 mths later and I am still at the 90% rating. 5-6 weeks ago as a test I hit a few golf balls to see how it would respond. I hit about 6 balls at 50% speed and there was no pain. 3 weeks ago I hit about 40 balls w/o pain during the hitting but I had some soreness for about 10 days afterwards.

So my short version of the story is not really that short but I wanted to get the point across.

My questions are about when should I think about going back to the sports doctor to discuss the surgery option? To me, I have been very patient and been very careful about not trying to rehurt the elbow. When is the appropriate time to seek a 2nd opinion? My doctor is very well respected in his field and to ME getting a 2nd opinion is a slap against his reputation as a great doctor.

I am really an avid golfer and I have not played in 8 mths. I am going on a short golf trip in 4 weeks but I am limiting the amount of time I am playing. The research I have done shows that if I have the surgery, I should layoff golf for a min. 5 mths which means another season lost. I was just hoping for some good advice on how to handle this injury.

Thanks,

Mike

 

SF,

I really appreciate the advice and I will have to accept the fact that I am going to have to wait a little while longer before I make any rash decisions. I am relatively young (32), have played sports all my life, and this injury is by far the worst I have ever had to deal with! I have been to P.T. more then a few times in my life I guess I was hoping for a quicker fix and resume my athletic lifestyle.

Again much thanks!

Michael