“I came home from the operation, and I hadn’t eaten for a few days,” Ken said. Since it had been a year since the initial injury, there also was a lot of scar tissue built up in the area, so that had to be removed.Īfter outpatient surgery, Ken was sent home to rest for several weeks before beginning physical therapy. “We have to graft some tissue to the end of the biceps and reattach the whole thing to the bone.” “When you have an injury like this, the tendon shortens, so we can’t just stretch it out to reach the top of the humerus bone where it was,” Dr. Krupp, M.D., shoulder surgeon with Norton Orthopedic Institute, led the surgery. “The entire long head medial tendon pulled off the bone,” Ken said. The sledgehammering required of Ken reinjured the officer’s shoulder. “But then we were called to breach the door of a suspect with a gun.” “I tried to stick with the boundaries they gave me” to protect the shoulder, Ken said. Ken’s department helps cover other jurisdictions, including providing backup across the river in Louisville, Kentucky. He spent a year trying not to overtax the arm and shoulder, trying not to make it worse and trying to let it heal to a certain degree.Īsking a SWAT team leader not to strain a shoulder is like asking a fish not to swim.Īdditionally, 2020 was the start of the pandemic, lockdowns and masking, but also a record year for calls to the police department. He was also advised not to do some things, including headstands and other strenuous activities. “I was supposed to ice it, take some ibuprofen and do certain stretches.” “They looked at me and told me the situation wasn’t to the point I needed surgery,” Ken said. Doctors told him there were tiny tears - one in the top of the biceps muscle and one in the long head medial tendon, the tough tissue that connects the biceps to the top of the shoulder. The first stop was his primary care provider, who sent Ken to Norton Orthopedic Institute. The sudden sharp pain signaled something was wrong. “I was prone on the ground, and he took my arm straight back over my head,” Ken said. It was a normal day on the job for this now 54-year-old, but as one of the recruits attempted to handcuff Ken during an exercise, things went sideways. Ken Haas, a corrections officer and SWAT team lead with the Floyd County Sheriff’s Office in Southern Indiana, was training police recruits in 2020 when a demonstration resulted in a shoulder injury.
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