“Life without dreaming is a life without meaning.” – Wale
In my previous post I rushed the Basel chapter; this time I’m slowing down.
Now, back to my DIY-style research. I concluded that reading raw, low-level medical papers wasn’t going anywhere. I lacked the big picture, and it was unlikely I would build it myself—the space was too vast. I needed a smarter way to navigate it than pure brute force.
The conventional way is to tap a network of specialists—in my case, sports-medicine doctors. I decided to order a few books on the niche subject of elite sports medicine and training in the hope of generating a fresh list of people to contact. At the same time, I was chatting with my chiropractor friend, and I was telling him how my Basel mission wasn’t working out. He suggested I should visit a chiropractor named Meersseman. My friend described Meersseman as equal parts legend and medical schismatic.
Meersseman was a founder of a famed AC Milan’s MilanLab—a high-tech, interdisciplinary center focused on cultivating peak performance. Through MilanLab, Meersseman pioneered applying predictive analytics (as in tech) to detailed training customization for each soccer player individually, with fantastic results in players’ performance and injury-free longevity. That’s the glorious part. He is a fervent believer in the ‘whatever works’ approach, disregarding standard Western practice, which is the less superb side. As a result, Meersseman attracts stern critics.
I was under the supervision of some of the best people in conventional medicine in the world, and they didn’t know what to recommend, so I was open to trying something new. I learned from my friend that Meersseman is based in Como, a picturesque city in Northern Italy, popular among wealthy techies from the Bay Area and celebrities from LA. Como was a few hours by a direct train connection from Basel, and I decided on the spot to go.
However, my schedule at Rennbahnklinik was packed. The whole idea of moving to Basel was to embark on a super-intense combination of physical therapy and training. So I had to talk to my therapist and free up a day for the trip. I thought about how I could run this idea by her. It took a lot of convincing to line up otherwise busy people for three months, and now I would effectively question her team’s skills. Or at least, I worried that could be one way to see it. Still, the priority for me was to try absolutely anything to finally recover and get to other things in life.
- “I’ve heard great things about this guy called Meersseman, I feel like we’re stuck, and I would like for him to see me. What do you think?”
- “Sounds like a good idea to see him. He sounds interesting and maybe will find something we miss. I’m curious what he will say.”
I was going to Como the following week.
I want to pause and share my thoughts on physical therapists working on a challenging condition. I’ve worked with more than two dozen by this point, and I developed an observation. You will get three reactions if you start throwing ideas for what they could try outside their curriculum. The bad ones will not mind your ideas but won’t be able to run with them either; they’re that bad. Good ones will often resist or visibly dislike your meddling with their expertise, almost like deep inside, they hold a scrap of insecurity. And then you have the great ones that are forceful when sure and perpetually curious. So the more stuck they are, the more open to experimentation and learning they are. It’s your growth mindset right here. Fabienne was among the best I’ve worked with.
Back to my trip to Como. I arrived in this cozy, sun-drenched town in Northern Italy around noon. I had some spare time before the appointment and went strolling through the town to explore local restaurants. I took this picture of the back patio of one of them:
Unexpectedly, this sight moved me. An all-in effort to recover is fundamentally a very lonely journey, and the deserted red rose was a perfect metaphor for my feelings. That picture became one of my strongest memories from my Como pilgrimages.
The appointment at Meersseman’s clinic consisted of three parts: a general admission interview, a posture-and-gait examination, and a half-hour slot with JP Meersseman himself. To cut it to the chase, Meersseman formulated the diagnosis instantly upon seeing me and the results of my posture examination. The verdict: my five-year-old TMJ injury from a near-fatal ski accident is causing my leg muscles to tense up. The visible symptoms were my pain/tightness in the adductor and pelvic rotation. An interesting twist is that a rotated pelvis forces other body parts (e.g., lower back) to compensate. That introduces a constant tension in the back and neck, which exacerbates joint misalignment — truly spooky action-at-a-distance. The worrying catch was that I didn’t hear how exactly jaw position could influence my adductor’s activity and why this muscle rather than another.
I took a train back to Basel the same day. The following day, I discussed this with Fabienne, and she found the hypothesis believable. She had heard of the jaw-pelvis-leg connection before. She didn’t know the exact mechanism behind it, either.
I had new hope and a new path to explore. Was it worth going, against all other options, though? Meersseman seemed to be onto something, but at the very end of our first appointment, he admitted that my case is complex, and he has to think about whether he can help me. He was hesitant, and I had some serious doubts. At this point, I had an experience of working with over a dozen doctors and became immune to too-good-to-be-true diagnoses. So how do you make the decision that this is the turn I should take next?
A side note: here, I’m offering a much more distilled version of my story with Meersseman. If you’re reading this—because, like me, you’re desperately researching the Internet for any new clue for your own injury, you might enjoy the fine details I included in week 5 and week 6 notes of my 2018 Basel trip.
As part of my research on JP Meersseman, I looked him up on Google Books. As a rule of thumb, I find media coverage (e.g., articles in sports magazines) to provide a far worse signal-to-noise ratio than books. A well-written nonfiction book represents an author’s compressed view of a subject. Hence my “life hack” is to utilize books as much as possible, and Google Books is invaluable in finding leads. Google Books yielded a particularly promising lead: Play On: The New Science of Elite Performance at Any Age by Jeff Bercovici. On my way to Como, I started reading the book and found this quote:
That tipped me into working with the Como-based chiropractor. He had the right kind of bravado to look where others might not have. My job was to both convince him that I’m worth his attention and, at the same time, watch out for any trace of snake oil. The problem with common sense is that it’s usually right; I’d remind myself often that stepping to the very edge of medicine must be coupled with utmost prudence.
On my subsequent trips to Como, I’d collect and analyze scraps of evidence that would either strengthen or weaken my belief that JP Meersseman held the keys to my puzzling muscle disorder. I eventually concluded he didn’t, and my search took me elsewhere in Europe.
Thanks to Lyn Nagara for reading my drafts.