Hi friend,
Thank you for your help in realizing a dream and renewing a life. Please share any resources you have with healing nerve and muscular atrophy, specifically, severe axillery nerve damage and deltoid atrophy (left axillery nerve damage and C5/C6 spinal comprehension lead to inability to feel, move, or control the left deltoid muscle, which lead to complete muscle atrophy). If there are any doctors, therapies, exercises, books, websites, products, or stories that have helped people heal, please let me know! I am willing to do whatever it takes to heal my body and my spirit.
I know people have healed from moderate nerve and muscular atrophy. There also has to be way to heal from this level of severe, almost complete, nerve and muscular atrophy. If lizards can grow their entire tail back, if babies can be created from just a few single cells…then I can heal this. I must!
I have struggled for over 4 years, over hundreds of doctors, and over thousands of websites, books, and dollars to heal this. There were times where I almost gave up and quit—with the body, with the pain, with the life. Some days, I think, for the briefest and the longest of moments, that I would rather kill myself than watch everything I worked for, fought for, lived for, die before my eyes.
I couldn’t stand feeling so helpless and hopeless, so humiliated and disfigured, so depressed and desperate. I wouldn’t want a life without my dreams—being an Olympic athlete, professional fighter, fitness competitor, world class personal trainer, and health entrepreneur. Yet, I know that even the best laid schemes of mice and men come undone. Maybe I can’t overcome this situation right now, but I can decide how I face it, how I embrace it, how I live with it, from it, through it.
Get busy living or get busy dying…
Current Treatment Options:
I am currently doing Qi Qong, Tai Chi, and chiropractic to heal the body. I have experienced acupuncturists, physical therapists, and scores of other therapies in the past. The case is so rare and severe that it is vital to have someone who has the experience, expertise, and energy to actually heal it. I need proven results on nerve and muscle healing.
I will do whatever it takes to heal my nerve and muscle completely. Anything that may help the nerve and the muscle heal and grow—testosterone boosting supplements, growth hormone stimulants, or energy enhancing herbs—is great. I never wanted to do steroids or HGH in the past, because I wanted to test how far I could go on my own. I am also afraid of the potential side effects of any drugs or treatments.
Yet, at this point, I would rather risk taking steroids and HGH than live the rest of my life without a functioning shoulder and body. I still need to find a doctor who can prescribe those drugs who actually has experience in healing axillery nerve and deltoid atrophy.
If I can find someone who has actually succeeded with that type of treatment, or any type of treatment, I will do it! Please let me know if you know anyone, especially if they are located around the Bay Area (San Jose). Please feel free to forward this to anyone else who may know anyone who can help. I know someone, somewhere, somehow, must have overcome this in this lifetime.
With my highest hope and deepest appreciation,
Andrew
Background:
All my life, I wanted to be a professional fighter, power lifter, and fitness competitor. In 2006, I got close to my dreams at 20 years old.
In April 2006, I got a severe left shoulder dislocation from flipping over the air during a wrestling takedown at the finals of a grappling tournament. The violent fall and shoulder dislocation led to axillery nerve damage, torn labrum, and twisted spine. I watched helplessly as my left shoulder atrophied into just skin and bone. I lost over 70 pounds of muscle, and my testosterone levels dropped from high 1200s ng/dl (highest levels of alpha males in their prime) all the way down to low 300s ng/dl (the average levels of 60 year old males).
I went to over 40 doctors in just 1 year, desperately searching and striving for a solution. I saw top neurosurgeons, orthopedics, acupuncturist, chiropractors, physical therapists, and anything and everything I could find.
The injury got so severe that I even experienced phantom limb in my left shoulder from September 2006 until February 2007. My shoulder was completely numb. When I touched my right cheek, right calf, and left arm, I could feel slight sensation in the left shoulder. This was due to the changes in the brain’s primary somatosensory cortex to compensate for the damaged axillery nerve. In February 2007, I began to recover slight sensation after the shoulder rapidly fired by itself for 15 seconds for the first time since the injury. About once a week to once a month, I would get electric shocks in my brain and shoulder.
From September 2006 to September 2007, I continued to work out, doing the shoulder rehabilitation exercises as much as I could and lifting as much as I could. I thought I was helping my body heal, but, I was actually damaging it since the shoulder could not even lift itself. Thus, I was compensating the muscle and twisting my entire body up into a knot. I was still benching 250 pounds, even though my shoulder did not even work anymore.
Healing in 2007-2008:
In June 2007, the neurosurgeon told me the only actionable option was a neural grafting, where they took a nerve from my triceps and insert it into my shoulder nerve. However, they were not sure if the shoulder would even take the new nerve, and, it could end up making my shoulder and my arm even worse. I knew there had to be another way.
In August 2007, I met Dr. Michael Molter at Tony Robbin’s UPW. He realized that my entire neck, spine, ribcage, pelvis, and legs have been twisted out of place due to the immense compensation that my entire body had to go through to deal with the traumatic shoulder injury. The general spinal compression, along with the local axillery nerve damage, was responsible for the neuromuscular dysfunction, disorder, and depression. He realigned my entire body and retrained my nervous system to feel, move, and heal. I had to relearn how to sit, walk, run, work, and even sleep.
In September 2007, I met Master Zhao, a Chinese Qi Qong Master. With Master Zhao’s and Dr. Molter’s energy healing, my axillery nerves came to life for the first time in over 1.5 years. I felt amazing sensations from his Qi, from experiences of a thousand acupuncture needles in my nerves to feelings of a giant, inflating ball in my shoulder; from melting lava in my bones to lighting in my mind; from blue and gold waves in my Dan Tian to an astral, spirit essence beyond my body.
From September 2007 to September 2008, I stopped lifting weights to allow my body to realign and recover in its new posture. During this entire year, I had to fly back and forth from San Diego to San Jose every 2-3 weeks to see these two life-saving doctors as I finished my senior year in college.
Healing in 2009-2010:
By January 2009, my body was finally stable and pain free after 3 years of complete dysfunction. In April 2009, I met Dr. Seth in his Qi Qong class. My shoulder was still so weak that it couldn’t even lift itself up, much less do any of the gentle Qi Qong or physical rehabilitation exercises. No one in recorded medical history has ever healed completely from that level of nerve and muscular atrophy before, much less go on to compete professionally or break world records or be a health guru. There is a rare, reticent pain in not being able to share your experience with anyone, because no one can ever understand what it is like, much less how to help.
I prayed, meditated, and visualized myself healing, lifting, and training as I lied in bed with my motionless shoulder. I couldn’t find any story of anyone who had healed from the same conditions I had, but I could find stories of paralyzed people who walked again, blind people who saw again, and dead people who lived again.
I began to see that there may be times in life when we can’t even move forward or get up anymore. There are tempestuous tides where the best we can do—the only thing we can do—is just sit still and hold on and breathe in. And it takes every breath we have to just breathe, because we are drowning, sinking, waning every moment. Maybe these battles aren’t about fighting, pushing, and conquering. Maybe they are about accepting, relaxing, and surrendering...Surrendering without giving in…And without giving up.
I began Dr. Seth Qi Qong class again in October 2009, and was finally able to do some of the simplest movements that engaged the shoulder and linked the entire body. It was the first time I could activate my shoulder in any physical exercises in over 4 years. The shoulder made dramatic progress from October 2009 to February 2010. I put everything I had into healing my body. Without health, there is nothing. I knew I could not afford to live the rest of my life as a cripple or invalid. There is so much I want to do in this life, and I need all the energy, vitality, and functionality I could have from my body.
I saw that faintest glimpse of light, of hope, for those few months. Then, the darkness came again.
In April 2010, the shoulder reached an impasse that became a plateau. It even seemed to shrink and weaken. I had always thought I would be healed in 3 months, then 6 months, then 1 year, then 2 years, then 3 years…Now, it had been over 4 years, and I was still not healed. I was fighting to just function, to just move, to just live. I had been functioning at 1%-10% of my physical performance for over 4 years now. There were few moments, days, and even weeks where I almost gave up. For almost 3 months after April 2010, I thought of suicide every single day.
What hurt the most wasn’t the lost of dreams, of loves, or even of identity. It wasn’t even the physical, mental, or emotional challenges. It was not being able to go backward or move forward.
Every day, I stared at the abyss, and the abyss stared back at me.
I could train my body to bench 300 pounds and to leg press 1000 pounds, yet I could not even do one single shoulder raise, one real barbell squat, or one full military press. No matter how strong or how fit the rest of my body got, my shoulder and my spine kept holding me back. I couldn’t see the point of forming and reforming a temple that just fell and fell again. I had no stomach for this Sisyphean challenge, no strength to push this rock up, and no sanity to see it roll down, over, and over, and over again. There was no atonement for this abandonment, no maceration for this madness, no vindication for this violation.
It wasn’t so much the physical weakness that distressed me; it was how it affected the rest of my life. Due to the nature of the severe atrophy, it felt like I had a 2 ton weight on my shoulder every moment I worked to heal it. It didn’t matter if I focused on it or ignored it, the shoulder, the nerve, the body, drained all of me…
Healing the body took everything I had that I had nothing left to do anything else—I didn’t have the focus to write; I didn’t have the energy to work; I didn’t have the strength to speak. Yet, if I didn’t heal my body, nothing else would matter.
I didn’t have the power to embody everything, or even anything, that I once taught: purpose and passion, productivity and positivity, growing and contributing. I could not heal my body, I could not pay my medical bills, I could not go outside my room, because I was afraid of having to talk to anyone about myself, because I couldn’t bear to face the life I wasn’t living. I was not even supporting myself, much less changing the world, much less doing anything I was put here for. I used to do life coaching, personal training, marketing, writing, speaking, traveling, and competing, all in just one day. Now, I could barely do just one of them in an entire month.
I felt like the entire Universe was mocking me, “Look how strong and fit you can still get, even with an entire shoulder and arm missing! Too bad that one body part never gets better, and, that one bad part will continue to cripple all your good parts, so you have to fight constantly and consistently to just be mediocre! All your hard work is for nothing. You can never do what you wanted to do or be who you were meant to be. At 24, you are already a has-been, and, to the rest of the world, a never-was! You’ll always look like a freak, a cripple, a Quasimodos, and, the harder you work out, the worse you will get! You won’t ever feel as great as you felt when you were 18! You won’t ever be a hero, a champion, a star again! You’ll never have the position, the connection, or the consummation to build your health centers, products, or programs! You worked all your life for a dream, and you have nothing to show for it except a crippled body, a tortured heart, an injured mind. You put all your eggs in one basket, and I just stepped and shitted all over it!”
Sometimes, I thought about how much I had lost and how little the shoulder had improved, and I felt like death. I just couldn’t see the point of working so hard for so long if it would never get better. I hated qi qong, the doctors, the therapists, the people, and the world who made me feel hope again and again, only to have it crushed again, and again, and again.
I couldn’t justify spending all my resources, time, energy, work, and money in healing my body if it wasn’t even healing! If I can’t heal from this, then what’s the point of my entire life? What good is an incomplete miracle, an unfinished race, an unsung song?
Back then, I could set world records, I could transform lives, I was asked to be on news and shows. Now, I couldn’t even get through a single day without pain, debilitating pain. Back then, I could change anything in my life—the abused childhood, the troubled relationships, the life opportunities. Back then, I could conquer anything—the mind, the body, the spirit. Now, I couldn’t even control my life, much less choose it. And the worst part of it all is I never even got to finish taking my shot! I spent 20 years to open those doors, and I didn’t even get to walk through it before the entire building shattered into pieces—parts that I can’t put back together, patches I can’t find, pictures I can’t see.
Back then, there was finally something—everything—out of the nothing that had been my whole life. Now, there was nothing.
I felt like everything I was doing to heal my body were mere life support, to just keep me alive. Was it worth fighting so hard to just be able to live, without something to live for?
The only thing that had kept me going was the faith that I would heal, that I would be complete. Because then, I could tell people the story of the boy who was beat down, given up, and walked over his whole life until he found salvation in martial arts, psychology, and philosophy. The teenager who went after his dreams and set world records, even though no one believed it was possible. The young man who got injured and everyone told him to just give up and move on his life as a cripple. The man who became the first scientifically documented person to heal completely from severe nerve and muscular damage, and, with that wisdom from experience, he integrates the best of the West and East, Yin and Yang, Old and New, to create the best programs, products, and principles for all mankind, so everyone can live well. The world needs a story like that. I needed a story like that…
Peace:
I don’t know how this story will end. And I can’t control what this is.
I don’t know if I will heal completely. I don’t know if I can compete
professionally. I don’t know if I will win Olympianly.
But I do know why I began. And I can choose how I live, what I do, and who I am.
