In the scorching heat of the an early August day last year, Chris Barr was about half way through Seaholm football’s opening practice of summer camp at Hillsdale College.
Barr was working on a one-on-one drill against the wide receivers when he decided to jam the player at the line. The wide receiver cut, Barr reached to grab him, and that’s when he felt an extreme pull on his muscle that left his shoulder feeling dead.“As my feet were stationary and I grabbed the player, when he ran my shoulder just yanked out,” Barr said. “After it came out it popped right back in, but the pain was still there for a while.”
After the first incident, his shoulder was never quite the same and it became a nagging injury that would last the entire season, until he received the right treatment.
“I just felt a lot of weakness in the arm and sharp pains when I used my shoulder after Hillsdale,” Barr said.
He would do therapy during the season with Seaholm trainer Bill “Allo” Watson every day before practice followed by heat and ice just to make it tolerable to play through. Finally when the season was over Barr got a second opinion on his shoulder.
“I got it checked out right after football and the doctor decided I needed surgery in February,” Barr said.
After the surgery Barr rehabbed his shoulder three times a week for several months until it got back to a somewhat normal state. Barr was also also a key part of the Seaholm baseball team. He had to miss his whole junior year just to rehab his shoulder and the injury has ended his baseball career.
“I used to be able to throw the ball 80 miles per hour,” Barr said. “Now I can’t come near that.”
Torn labrums do not always happen by physical contact. Sometimes the labrum can become worn down. For example, senior pitcher Scott Anderson had no high impact blow to the shoulder or freak over extension, he was just preparing for an upcoming season.
“ I wanted to get a jump start on the baseball season because I was going to be one of the key starters on the pitching staff and I also have some interest in playing college ball,” said Anderson.
“So I decided to start pitching two days a week in January all the way into the season.”
Once March came around, Anderson was in midseason form; throwing around 80-100 pitches a week. At this point, he began to feel some pain.
“I usually feel some soreness after every start, but the main difference this time was the pain wouldn’t go away after a few days of rest and I started to feel this pain in mid-April after my second start,” Anderson said.
After his fifth or sixth start Anderson decided to get it checked out. He got an MRI and was diagnosed with a torn labrum. So they decided to shut him down and see if time would heal the labrum.
It didn’t work, the sharp pain and weakness of Anderson’s left shoulder never disappeared and they decided to go with the surgery. He received the surgery a couple weeks ago and is adjusting to the sling which he will be with for the next four weeks.
In the past ten years, Dr. Joseph of Performance Orthopedic Guettler has seen over twenty torn labrum’s from Seaholm athletes. So with this becoming more and more common among athletes, the operation is becoming more advanced.
Dr. Guettler, who is the football team doctor, explains the significant changes in the surgery in the last ten years or so.
“Because arthroscopic surgery didn’t exist 30 or 40 years ago we treated bankart tears Maple Athletes Torn (which is a type of labrum tear) through open incision and through that incision you would actually have to cut through tissue and other muscles and tendons to get to the place where you had to repair it which prolonged the recovery,” Guettler said.
Today the arthroscopic surgery is becoming very advanced, safer and more popular among doctors.
“The arthroscopic techniques have eliminated the need to cut through all the muscles and tendons, because you’re basically inside the joint and you’re using these advanced little suture anchors and we use little things to pass the suture. It’s done as an outpatient procedure, patient usually knocked out or up un use pain pumps that numb the shoulder and control pain for two to three days after the surgery,” Guettler described.
Dr. Guettler explains step by step process of the entire arthroscopic operation.
“We usually poke three holes, which roughens the area of the socket and around the o ring (labrum) and take a drill and make little holes into the socket. Then we put suture anchors in (witches or screws) that are made ofbio absorbable material, so when you put them in they hold the bone but eventually they are absorbed into the body. Then you tie the labrum down to the anchor and it holds it there next to the raw surface so it can actually heal,” Guettler said.
The success rate of using the arthroscopic surgery is in the low to mid-ninety percent ever since the beginning of this operation in the 1990’s.
After the surgery, the recovery process begins and it’s not a quick fix. Depending on the significance of the tear, the recovery is anywhere from three to six months. If the patient receives the surgery, he or she is usually in a sling from anywhere from four to six weeks. After the two month mark the physical therapy begins.
“We start some light exercises pretty early, like the two week mark, and then we start actual physical therapy three times a week or so just shy of a month. This can normally last from two to four months,” Guettler said.
Surgery isn’t always the best opinion for healing a torn labrum. For senior Neal Page, rest and diligent physical therapy did the job.
“I went to physical therapy to strengthen the muscles around the labrum and it proved to be fairly successful,” Page said.
This has been the route for many others at Seaholm including Brandon Altman, Carter Ortale and Sam Wilson.
There are also ways athletes can get help at Seaholm. Allo Watson has helped many Seaholm athletes recovery from this injury.
“We can start you off with rehab, which consists of heat to relax the muscle and ice to numb the pain, after that we can work on some weight exercise about three times a week,” Watson said.
The real factor here is to figure out what we can actually do prevent this injury from happening in the first place. This is where School athletic trainer and Social Studies teacher Bob Carleton comes into play.
“The problem with torn labrums is: if it’s not contact, it’s usually a matter of the athlete’s body is unbalanced and we need to get the front of your body, shoulders, back and scapula balanced and strong,” Carleton said.
Carleton explains that sometimes kids just come into to the weight room and just bench and squat and they really don’t protect the shoulders.
Unfortunately, at times even after surgery and therapy the shoulder is not completely onehundred- percent healed. For example, senior James Bertrand tear went through the whole process, but has recently has some trouble with it.
“I had it pop out a little bit in my last hockey game, but the trick is to just keep up the physical therapy,” Bertrand said.
