Our good friend had her rotator cuff surgery to stretch the tendon back found out that the surgery was a complete failure in a recent MRI. Her surgery happened about 6 months ago and she completed all PT exercises as prescribed and a couple of months ago the shoulder was swollen and painful. She had never gained the ability to lift her arm. The MRI showed that the screw(s) was still in place but her bone had broken. The doctors could not agree on what to do with her. The orthopedic surgeon said a shoulder replacement is now needed while her PCP said it was her rheumatoid arthritis issue and to see her rheumatologist instead. She is seeing her rheumatologist soon. She recalled a pain in her shoulder after her surgery while slipping her arm into a blouse and that could be when her bone broke.
You are not allowed to move your arm, when putting on clothes, you must keep your arm the same way else you can indeed tear it. You can bend your elbow, that's ok. You can hang it loose, that's ok. It is not ok to move your arm away from your body. Getting dressed is indeed tricky. I'd tend to hang my arm straight down, bend at the waist sideways towards that arm, and try and get something onto that arm with the other arm. It was not fun. Or, get DW to help.
That is terrible though, the torture and now having to start over potentially and continued weakening of her muscles will turn into a real problem most likely. That was my biggest fear, not moving the arm, day and night. The worst was if I knocked something off, I would always want to react instantly with my right arm. So, I kept it in the sling which also became torture. But it sounds like she did not break an anchor.
Broken bone is awful to top it off, not sure what they will do. I am sorry to hear that, I can't even imagine. 6 months later too, after all that work! I hit like on your post, but of course I don't "like" it.