Steven: I'm not a med person but I have sustained an injury to my flexor ligament and muscles in my forearm from hyperextending my elbow (AKA tennis elbow). It is not an injury that heals quickly or stops hurting if you "leave it alone". You have to get in to see either a PT, Kinesiologist or an RMT and start the proper course of treatment. I left my injury alone thinking that if I just threw on a tensor and carried on I'd be fine. For 2 months I did nothing about it and when I realized that I was favouring not only that side of me, but now my shoulders, wrists and upper back were being affected, I had to get into to see the PT. It took a year, yes a year to repair the damage, get the tendons, ligaments and muscles to work without pain and finally I could lift a coffee cup without dropping it. My grip went from a 48 down to 15. I inadvertently weakened my upper back muscles (because I was sucking out at being in pain when I moved my arm I hunched forward to stop it from hurting) and as a result, that allowed my shoulder muscles to slide forward and the pecs to shorten and I ended up with a reduced ability to move my shoulders (both were affected). The cascading effect only took 2 short months to occur and it took a year to get better (at one point I couldn't even flip a high five or put a coat on without curling up in a fetal position and crying for my mommy from the pain and I have a high tolerance to pain, I pushed an eight pound kid out for 72 hours with no drugs).
What I'm trying to point out is that even though you may think the injury is localized to just an elbow, wrist or whatever is injured, the body has a unique way of circumventing pain and immobility and it does have a cascading effect on other working parts especially if the muscles are aggravated and injured enough to cause scarring which restricts movement and causes both initial site pain and referring pain. Think of your muscles,ligaments and tendons as one big elastic band and if one part of it gets torn or tangled up, the whole elastic is compromised.
I'd hate to see you in recuperation for a lengthy time because your injury wasn't addressed in a manner to avoid scarring and weakened muscles and optimized it's healing.
