If my life story ended here today, it would be a happy ending. Right now I am underway, sailing to Boston from New York City on a tugboat hauling 50,000 barrels of heating oil for all the homes and businesses of New England.
My job is physically and mentally demanding. Getting along with crew members is very important because no one is going anywhere if you don’t like it or can’t get along with someone. When the weather changes, the stress level changes, and everyone needs to keep their opinions to themselves. This is relevant, because as I sit in the galley writing this, there are numerous brands of ibuprofen, aspirin, homeopathics, and pain ointments that help us get through the day and night.
The saying goes, “nothing says sailor like caffeine and nicotine”. I would like to add pain distractors to that saying too, but no one talks about that. No one wants to hear anyone complain about pain, probably because we’re all hurting in one way or another. Steel doesn’t give way to anyone.
Since I was a child, my Mom started taking me to the chiropractor as I was in a few accidents, I was very active in the mountains of NH and there was no activity I wouldn’t try to press the limits on. Well, with age those injuries have caught up to me; they almost led to shoulder surgery and loss of my job.
With a sense of panic about losing my job, I began searching for alternative medicine. About 7 years ago I found a Taiwanese acupuncture doctor who brought me back to working condition. My session with her was three parts and took about 2.5-3 hrs. First, was the “massage” where she walked on my back and used her heels to dig into and kick my body. Then, cupping with the old school glass cups, which would be left on for 15-20 minutes. Finally, the acupuncture with electric stimulation attached. This was the saving grace that brought my mobility and strength back, enough to allow me to keep working.
The regimen with the acupuncture doctor and chiropractor every 3 weeks was working, but I still had headaches and muscle pain, almost all the time. I began to take CBD and turmeric concoctions which did help and still is helping a lot. Ultimately I moved back to NH after 30 years of being away, and that mentally uplifted me to a whole new mindset.
Now, back “home” I began to physically decline as my team was a long flight away. With so many things to do getting set up in my new home, I didn’t make time for self care. This resulted in starting the ibuprofen and aspirin regimen. Yes, I got a gym membership my first week at my new place and stretched and worked out to keep my body strong for work. Despite these efforts, the pain was increasing, and my tolerance for mistakes made by crew members at work was decreasing at the same rate. After a few call-ins to the port captain’s office asking me to “take it down a notch” I began to search for a new team.
I looked for my new team within a 2 hour driving radius. I tried an acupuncture doctor and massage therapist with a plastic cupping session. This would not do: the acupuncture had no electric stim and the massage was the gentle feel good type. I would leave both practitioners feeling so upset with such dismay that my body would get more tense, yikes.
So, I continued my search. This time physical therapy was on the table. I had been to a physical therapist after I had knee surgery, you know the treadmill and 5 pound weights with a lot of just sitting there listening to the therapist tell me about what they’re trying to get me to do and why it would work. In my mind physical therapy was an insurance racket.
Then I saw Dr. Greg’s story. Bingo, this guy has been where I was right then. I called, got a 2 hour appointment and kept very low expectations. I arrived at Gr. Greg’s clinic and noticed he had mats, stretchy bands, and foam rolls, so okay he might know what’s going on.
We started the session talking, putting things at ease, and to me this is very important because to me half of pain is in the mind and emotional state one is in. Then, we got on the mats, both doing the stretches together, and he could see where I was having a hard time getting movement. After about 45 minutes of stretching, I got on the table, a chiropractor table, and he pressed around finding my areas of concern, counting vertebrae and ribs. Then, the needles came out. I am not a needle person but if it would help heal me and ease the pain I am for that. I think the first ones were in the shoulders and I won’t lie, there was pain, and like in the Marine Corps, the saying goes, pain is weakness leaving the body.
This needle session is not like acupuncture where they stick them and just leave them in your energy meridians, these were going where my pain was. He wiggled them around, and the sensation was unlike anything I have felt before; it was like using a stim pack but in my muscle. Then, he said, yep your shoulder just dropped about an inch! The session continued and after each placement there was a few seconds of pain as my muscles were so tight from not having my usual regimen at my old home, and then, wow ! , blood flow and release in my body.
The biggest part of my therapy has been this one spot that I rarely tell any therapist because no one has ever had any success with it, so i just avoided the aggravation of being teased with hope of relief. But Dr. Greg found it, he calls it the epicenter. It was a muscle tear that pulled a rib out of place right before I went to Paris Island for 13 weeks of boot camp and it never got a chance to heal. Since then I have been jamming any corner of any structure into that spot for so long I have damaged the muscle tissue.
After seeing Dr. Greg for about a year, that spot has slowly left my life. My shoulders work, my lower back works, and the spot is fading into a story with a happy ending. Recently I traveled to Italy with my girlfriend I met in VT. It was our first trip together without any of life’s distractions and I wanted it to go smoothly and keep my calm in any stressful situations while traveling aboard, i.e. sitting in an airplane for a long time. I made an appointment with Dr. Greg right before I left. I flew and walked the streets of Cinque Terre and the Tuscan hillside with only the beautiful landscape and my beautiful girlfriend on my mind.
Thank you Dr. Greg!
~Jesse Masek
