Last July, I went on a charter fishing boat out of Homer, Alaska. We went 35 miles out to where Cook Inlet meets the Bering Sea. In eight-foot swells, we baited up with whole salmon heads and dropped our lines, weighted with three-pound sinkers, some 200 feet down. Almost immediately I hooked a big fish. Twenty minutes later I ended up with a 45-pound Pacific halibut flopping on the floor of the boat next to me. When you landed a fish in the stern, you moved to the bow. Soon after positioning myself in the lurching bow, I hooked another big halibut. Then I slipped and fell, stressing my right shoulder as I grabbed the rail. The next morning, my right shoulder was very sore. I took some ibuprofen but continued fishing. What's a little shoulder pain when you are in paradise!

When I got home, my shoulder was not only still sore, but also weak, and the range of

movement was restricted. I could not draw either my compound or re-curve bow, take a full back swing with a golf club, or even sleep on my right side. I knew that I needed help.

For years, our family doctor has been an acupuncturist, Dr. Xiao "Rocky" Wang. Rocky is a unique medical practitioner. In Beijing, he trained in traditional Chinese medicine for six years and then spent five more years training to become an orthopedic surgeon. Before leaving Beijing, he was the surgeon in-charge at a major hospital, performing over 1000 operations, as well as being a medical school clinical teacher.

In the U.S., Rocky was a professor at the College of Traditional Chinese Medicine for seven years before going into private practice. Several of his former students are now physicians with national sports teams, including the Chinese women's Olympic soccer team and (formerly) the Chinese women's world champion volleyball team.

Rocky was very familiar with shoulder injuries. In China he had operated on some shoulder injuries and found mixed results. With regard to my case, he said there was damage to the rotator cuff, the biceps, and the deltoid muscles, but it was possible to treat me without surgery. He advised that I would have to start treatment right away, as I was suffering from adhesive capsulitis-adhesions of scar tissue in the fascia that would limit my range of movement and create pain. He said that there was a three-month window for healing; otherwise the adhesions would grow worse and it would be difficult to treat.