Comment by lelanthran

> As someone who's going to the doctor next week to discuss potential shoulder surgery, this is timely.

I was in the same position at age 42-ish. Shoulder pain in right shoulder so bad that I could not even lift a cup of coffee.

> I really need to figure out whether it's going to make things better or worse, but unfortunately, that feels like something a doctor can't guarantee one way or the other.

I heard the same thing from 3x different surgeons (orthopedic, I think), which lead to...

> Any anecdotes or other experiences/thoughts are appreciated.

... not having any surgery. Over the course of the next 3 months it remained the same in severity (did not get worse, may have gotten better slightly or else I started learning to live with it). The subsequent six months the pain started abating. Over the next 6 months the pain went away almost totally. Now, 8 years later, I don't feel any pain at all.

Of course, I am diabetic, so make of that what you will. When the first surgeon checked my scans (MRI, Xrays and something else - ultrasound, maybe), and said they are not sure if surgery would fix it, I went to a second surgeon with the same scans, got told the same thing. When the third surgeon said the same thing, I decided to wait and see.

Good thing I did; surgery doesn't always turn out well.