About thirteen years ago I started experiencing shoulder pain, but I had no specific injury or event that seemed to have caused it. The pain was persistent, lingering for months, and though it was not overly painful, it was enough to affect my golf swing and other athletic activities. I visited an orthopedic doctor hoping to discover what was wrong and see if the shoulder could be repaired. He sent me for an x-ray, then an MRI, but neither revealed any broken bones or ligament tears. The doctor then recommended I do physical therapy, which I did for several months, but that didn’t seem to help—the nagging pain and lack of motion in my shoulder persisted. He said the only other option at that point was surgery.