I was exactly in your situation back in 2003' minus the head aches, but could have gotten there, if I didn't find some relief. I was working on winglet mods for some 737s, which required a lot of drilling and reaming overhead, for some reason unknown for the third aircraft, they built the stands higher up than normal. Before I was doing all this work standing and able to keep my head straight, but this time I had to do it on one knee, with my head tilted to one side and keeping an eye on what I was doing. I didn't notice that I did any damage, until the muscles around the base of the neck slowly became tight after a few days working in that condition, by the weekend I woke up in the middle of the night with both arms feeling like they were being constricted of blood at the rotator cuff. They ached and felt numb as hell going all the way down to the finger tips, with the finger feeling fat and swollen.
I ended up helping a friend move some heavy boxes later in the day, and it actually brought some relief by stretching my arms out, at least I was feeling some circulation flowing again. Unfortunately a really good chiropractor moved his clinic to New Jersey, so I tried to find a replacement, and found some OK ones and a couple of s***ty ones with fancy machines, and no real feel for bone cracking. My old chiropractor use to do acupressure, working out all the knots in the muscles, before doing joint manipulations, which went a lot easier. Some of the chiropractors don't do that and try to do it without releasing the muscles, that are immobilizing a joint that is off a little, and making things worse by having other muscles tighten up, and eventually they start pulling on the nerves, and that's when you feel something wrong.
I spent $1200 in massage therapy, which wasn't covered by work, but the only way I could relax the tension between my shoulder and neck, and maitain it from getting worse. I didn't go through WCB at work, I reported it but it seemed more of a PITA to get it started, since my symptoms showed up on the weekend. I suffered like that for 2 yrs, and never feeling a 100%, every now and then let me know it was still there, with a shock from the going down both arms and out the finger tips. I didn't the know RMT that I know now, which might have been helpful back then, meanwhile he was working there all a long.
In 2005' I fluked out and had an eye opener, I went on a trip to Malaysia and Thailand backpacking with some friends. After a long day of walking around in flip flops, seeing the sights in Kuala Lumpur, we strolled by a massage parlor offering Reflexogy, and having it done this treatment in Thailand on previous trips, it's a nice way to relax the tired dogs. I convinced them it was nice and relaxing and a good way to end the day. Things started out nice, with girls serving us tea and washing our feet in hot water, while we kicked back in recliners, then two guys and a girl come in with stools, pressure point sticks and some oils. My buddy got the bigger guy, his girlfriend had the girl, and I got this little guy. They started massaging our feet with oil, and I start closing my eyes and getting relaxed, then all of a sudden it starts hurting like a MF! They started hitting the pressure points with the rounded stick, and I'm thinking to myself "this isn't how it feels in Thailand!", and trying to suck it up like a man holding my breath, but deep down I wanted to cry, my feet were being violently molested by this kid who doesn't know what he is doing, it felt like my feet were going to be black and blue. I go to look over at my friends hoping they were getting better treatment, but they were staring at me holding their breath, trying not to scream bloody murder, or was it MF? When it was all done, we were surprised that our feet weren't black in blue, but actually felt fxxxing good, like walking on pillows. As were walking out, I saw that they did a 1hr shoulder massage for $20, and decided what the hell I'll come back tomorrow and get that done, it's cheap. When I went back the next day, and sat me in a office chair, with the backrest supporting my chest. I had this guy slowly dig his elbow into the top of my neck and down my shoulder, even hitting between the center of my upper back for a whole hour. I felt good when it was done, but it felt like any other deep tissue massage. When I woke up the next morning, I felt exhausted like I didn't sleep at all, but I was pretty sure I slept a lot and soundly. I ended up still trekking around the whole day and toughed it out, meanwhile the muscles in my upper body felt tired and burning, sapping the energy out of me. I couldn't wait for the day to end, so I could lay down and die in my hotel bed. I woke up the next day after a deep sleep, and had the feeling of all this s*** built up in my shoulders wash out of me, as I stood up. I swear I have never felt this good in a long time, like I was 19 again with all this good energy. I guess that shoulder massage unlocked the puzzle of knots, I could actually feel where the spine was off in between the shoulder blades, I still had a slight pinch but not really annoying. I went for another Reflexogy treatment before we left KL, and surprised it didn't hurt as much as the first one, so I guess they must have gotten the evil out of my feet.
We then met up with a friend from work that's malaysian and headed out to one of the Perhentian Islands. After a long crazy taxi ride to the dock, trying to keep the taxi driver awake, since it was near the end of Ramadan our taxi driver was starved and exhausted. We were lucky not to hit a tree while my friend tried to keep the driver awake making friendly conversation to distract him from sleeping. While lounging on the beach, we met this spanish couple, and we started talking about massages and a new found revelation for the healing arts. Well this spanish girl had a pretty bad car accident, and hasn't been the same either until this trip. Before they arrived on the island, they were staying at a hostle in Georgetown in Penang, which coincidentally was our next stop, since my friend from work his wife is from there. They told us of this indian guru, that did this cobra massage and fixed her pain. When we got to Penang, we went on a hunt on Georgetown, because we forgot the name of the hostile they stayed at. So from bar to bar and some restaurants, we asked other backpackers if they had heard of this guru guy or cobra massage, no one had a clue what we were talking about, but were interested in it too. Just as we were going to give up hope and call it night, someone asked the bar owner, and we were told to see this other bar owner down the road, through this alley and onto this quiet street, thinking this is a good time to get mugged if anything, but sure as s*** there was this bar and the guy knew what we were talking about and gave us the directions. We got there as they were just locking the doors to the office and retire for the night, they gave us a number to call in the morning, because he gets booked up pretty fast. I got lucky and got an appointment the next day, since we had one more day in Penang, and back to KL, then onto Thailand. The massage seemed like any other massage with a menthol like oil, but a little odd with him burping a lot while giving the massage, hmm, must have been some spicy Laksa earlier??? When he was done he told me to stand up flat against the wall, and put my arms out straight in front of me, with my hands spread wide open. He told me to open and close them 5 times, and on the fifth closing all this crackling shot out from my right shoulder all the way down to the fingers. I was surprised and so was he, he said usually it comes out of both arms!? I still had that little pinch in my vertebrae, but that was strange enough to be worth it.
We stopped into Bangkok on the way home, and went for a hot oil massage, since it we be a long while before we would get treated like this for cheap. It was a perfect ending to the trip, the finishing move to that massage was to rest my back on his knees, with my arms behind my head like I was doing a sit up. He then hook his arms under my armpits and gently rolled me back onto his knees, and my whole spine from the base of my lower back to the base of my skull, it all clicked together like dominos dropping. The pinch was gone, and my whole spine realigned, that was a great trip, I've never felt better, and some other things that were plaguing me for quite some time went away too.
Unfortunately after 2 weeks of being back from vacation. I crawled into the fuel tank in a wing to remove a fastener, that caused me to contort myself and my neck to see what I was doing and knock out a stupid fastener. I guess being screwed up for so long, it easily went back out of shape, I didn't give it enough time to let that area get stronger, so I still kind of live with it. I went back a few years ago to that place for another shoulder massage, but they changed how they did it and the length of time was cut in half too, so that was a bummer.
I can always ask.
