Jeff’s Story: Back to Teaching Without the Pain

The incident that caused it was actually storm damage. I was cleaning up after a storm and we have a little apple tree up there that I was trying to protect. I had a very large tree at a 45 degree angle and was cutting it down to where it was manageable to where I could try to roll it away from that tree and not get it crushed. Well unfortunately, with the ground being wet, I was pulling it, the ground gave, gave my shoulder a little a bit of a ride. I had some immediate discomfort but I just kept working and it wasn't a big deal.

About two weeks later, I was actually in the front yard throwing a ball with my little girl. I threw the ball and just sharp pain in my right shoulder. Being a band director, and that being during marching season, I was able to actually go see an athletic trainer at school. I went in to see Annette and she looked at it and had me do some motions and that kind of thing, and said, "Yeah, that's something you're really going to want to get taken care of." At that point, I go see my family doctor, whatever. She actually recommended Dr. Mark Zunkiewicz because he is the person that handles all of our student surgeries at Miami East. If she trusts our kids with him than I figured it was a good move and I couldn't really go wrong. I just scheduled an appointment directly with him to go get evaluated.

In the beginning, there weren't really a lot of motions that were all that uncomfortable. He was not really convinced that it was a slap tear, but that individual, over the shoulder, behind the head, over the head kind of motion was just agonizing.

The only way to repair a torn labrum is surgery. As soon as I had the MRI, the dye-injected MRI, to see if there was actually anything leaking out of the labrum and there was. It was a pretty defined tear, a good sized one as well. At that point, Dr. Z said we have to have surgery to correct it. The other issue that I had was where the tear happened was where half of my bicep was attached. The longer edge of my bicep. He presented two scenarios to me. The first one being because of my age, and I had just turned 40, just have the labrum repaired, have some diminished strength and some diminished range of motion just based on where the tear happened and what they could do with the repair based on where it was related to the bicep. The other option was called a tenodesis where they detach half the bicep and move it down and over, attach it to healthy tissue, and then repair the labral tear.

The surgery date was set and I just had to make sure that I get everything done around the house that was going to require two arms for a while because the surgery puts you out of commission for quite a while. I left the hospital the same day. It was a same-day procedure. Went in early that morning, I was out mid-afternoon, which was nice. It was nice to be able to recover at home. You can never really fully rest in a hospital as well as you can at home. At at point, I was in, what I call, the "flat jacket" which was a very restrictive harness for my shoulder and my right arm. It was locked down. There was no way I could move anything.

After the tenth day, I was ready to go. Ready to start physical therapy and he released me to do so. The first time I went to physical therapy and I got stretched out, it was the most painful thing that I had incurred since my injury all the way through surgery. It was horrifying. I just couldn't believe that my should and my arm could hurt that much and yet it did. At that point, you understand that the question that you should be asking is, "When am I going to be capable of doing this?" Not, "When am I going to be able to do it?" That's completely different mindset and that's what Dr. Z was trying to tell me and eventually I was smart enough to catch on and learn the lesson. That really drove me to make sure that I stayed on top of my recovery and did what I was supposed to do. Physical therapy ended in the third week of March I do believe. It would have been through December, January, February, so it was about 3 and a half months, two times a week.

It's great. I went out and played 18 holes of golf yesterday. Didn't score as well as I'd like to because I hadn't played for a year but it was fun. I'm just riding the high of the fact that I've got my life back.

Premier Orthopedics, very professional organization. From the time you walk in to the receptionists, to the nurses, everybody was very kind and that's what you look for. Everybody's got the nice offices. Everybody has the state-of-the-art facilities, but it's about the people and the relationships. The nursing staff, the receptionists, everybody there was always very accommodating, very kind, and I was very pleased with the overall experience. I'm really glad that I went with Premier Orthopedics and Dr. Zunkiewicz.