Mike Heinzerling

Mike and his bowling buddies were tossing balls down the lane when Mike felt a snap in his right shoulder. When it bruised up two days later, Mike got it checked out. An x-ray and an MRI showed that the muscle had pulled away from the bone, and his tendons were frayed. “I need rotator cuff surgery,” Mike says. “I was hesitant. Voluntary surgery was not high on my priority list.”

He put it off . . . for 10 months.

Mike talked with orthopedic surgeon Hans Bengtson, MD about other options, like physical therapy. “He told me, ‘You can try everything, but you need surgery.’ I told him I was old-school, and I would just gut it out,” Mike recalls. “He told me I needed to let go of the past,” he laughs.

Another factor: At Mike’s age, arthritis could set in at the injured joint. “That’s not something I wanted to deal with either,” Mike says. “So I decided surgery would be best.”

The orthopedic and surgical team “made it very easy,” Mike says. “Everyone put my mind at ease. They educated me with everything they were going to do.”

Dr. Bengtson repaired Mike’s rotator cuff tendon tear surgically. Mike went home the same day. Stabilizing the joint in a sling and wrapping his shoulder in a cold therapy machine for several days helped reduce swelling and pain. “That was the best thing since sliced bread,” Mike says.  

Mike had physical therapy with Kevin Johnson, PT for about eight weeks. “Kevin is a nice guy, and really knows what he’s doing,” Mike says. “He showed me the benefit of more repetition, not more weights, to recondition the shoulder and gradually build muscle tone.” A month after surgery, the ortho team was impressed by Mike’s range of motion. He continues doing the exercises Kevin taught him, to help keep the muscles in both arms strong to protect his rotator cuffs, a key factor for long-term success.

In hindsight, Mike says he’d do one thing differently about having surgery: “I wish I’d done it earlier.”

Mike’s pretty active. “I’ve been a little accident-prone,” he says. As a kid, a snowmobile accident left him with 50 stitches in his head. And in 2010, while at Elko Speedway, Mike was accidentally electrocuted. “I was dead,” he says. “I actually could see myself walking down a dirt path lined with trees in bloom, and heard my name in the distance. The voice got louder, and when I opened my eyes, I was lying on the back of the trailer and my hands where I held the cables were burned down to the bone.”

At Northfield Hospital’s Emergency Department, “they bandaged up my hands, watched me for a few hours to make sure I was okay, then discharged me.” He asked to go back to the speedway “to let everyone know I was okay.”

For all his medical mishaps, “I like to stay local,” says Mike, who lives in Farmington. “It’s a great hospital, and the Farmington Clinic is wonderful, too. The hospital is 20 minutes away. It’s so convenient.”

Mike’s advice for others who like to goof around? “If you get hurt, see your doctor. Take their advice. If you put it off, you’re eventually going to have to take care of it. Do that sooner, so you can get better and enjoy life.”

And move on to your next adventure.