Don't Focus on the Injury

Fix your form instead.

When we get injured, we spend a lot of time "fixing it," but not much time changing the cause.  Just as much or more of your time should be spent comparing your form to that of the uninjured to see if it matches up.  If not, then you are just putting a band-aid on the problem and it will continue to hurt.

If your shoulder hurts while swimming, taking ibuprofin might help for a short while, but the problem will get worse.  Instead, you should be spending your time trying to find a friend that can video you swimming.  Take that video and compare it to othe ones online of Phelps and Thorpe.  If you don't have the same form, that's where you should focus your energy.  Yes, you are not as fast as them, but you will NEVER be as fast as them if your form isn't better and especially if you're in the doctor's office instead of the pool.

The proper way to exercise is to always use perfect form, no matter how slow or fast.  If you get sloppy while going fast, then you're just training yourself to use bad form and injury will soon follow.  And bad form under the higher stresses of going faster amplifies the forces that injure you.  Instead, you go as fast as you can with perfect form.  When you can't go any faster, then that's your limit.  With practice, you'll get faster and faster with perfect form and also reduce your risk of injury to near zero.  Now take new that athlete with perfect form and no time off for injuries and tell me who's going to be faster in a few months - the sloppy one with high injury risk or the perfect execution one?

You know the answer, so start!