Marc Courtney is a 70 year old former Royal Marine who has always led an incredibly active life. So, as you can imagine of a former Marine, when joint pain started to take aim he wasn’t going to take it lying down. This is Marc’s story…
I’m turning 71 this June but I’m still working. I was supposed to retire a few years ago when I was 67 but then Lockdown hit and shortly after that I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Now my wife needs an operation so I thought while she waits for that I might as well carry on working. These days a lot of my job in construction involves me shouting at people a lot so it’s not too bad.
Prior to working in construction I was a fireman for 13 years and prior to that I was a Royal Marine. I served in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, I was part of Operation Motorman which saw us go into no-go areas to regain control. The thing with serving in a situation like that is it makes you aware of your mortality. In the three tours I did there we lost two lads and one lost his leg. But when you’re young you never think it’s going to be you.
My Dad was a hard man. He ran away to sea when he was 13, he lied about his age in 1933. He raised us to look at life as two choices: you can either stand up to the bad stuff or you can lie down and let it run you over. He taught us to always stand up. I’m not one to stress about things, there’s no point in it, graveyards are full of stressful people. You know, being in the Marines, it wouldn’t be uncommon to carry a pack of 100 pounds on your back. My boy’s now in the Marines, he’s been in it for 7 years and just did his induction into the Special Forces, so he’s making me very proud, first to follow his dad into the Marines and then to go one step further than me.
I lived in South Africa in Cape Town for 9 years and while I lived there I liked competing in marathons and ultra marathons. I did the Comrades Ultramarathon which is 90 kilometres (55 miles) and the oldest and longest ultramarathon in the world. You run from Durban to Pietermaritzburg. But I love stuff like that, I think it’s Marine logic; we haven’t got any!
As I got older I was doing smaller runs, about 40 minutes a day. At weekends I’d do a longer run of a few hours. More than anything it was to keep the ail at bay really. One day I started to get this pain in my leg which got progressively worse. So I stopped running for a bit to see if it got any better. It didn’t but I don’t really do doctors, I hadn’t seen one for 13 years prior to that. But I got a phone appointment with one and I said to him, “Doc, with all due respect, what can you tell me about my leg over the phone?” So he said I better come in. I met him and he said he’d send me for an X-ray, but I know my body so I said I want blood tests as well.
The X-rays came back and I had osteoarthritis in both knees. But the bloods came back and told me I had cancer. If I hadn’t asked for those blood tests I probably wouldn’t be here now. So when dealing with cancer, osteoarthritis doesn’t seem so bad. I had to have 32 sessions of radiotherapy. I didn’t even stop work, I just took local jobs so I could get to the hospital everyday. I’m coming up to my 9 month blood test but so far they haven’t detected any cancer. Cancer treatment isn’t great, every three months they give you a hormone injection directly into your tummy, which makes you put on weight. So I was keen to get back to running to help shift that weight.
The only thing through all of this was I wasn’t really able to run due to the pain in my knees. I saw a physio who told me I was too young to have a new knee, I wondered at my age how old I have to be for a new knee but I guess that’s my youthful complexion I have to blame. The doctor gave me painkillers to ease my joint pain. But I was having to take 6 to 8 co-codamol tablets a day! If I didn’t take them my knees ached so badly I couldn’t function. But I hated taking them so I wanted something to take the pain away that didn’t mean me filling myself with drugs.
I was working in Essex about 6 months ago and I was talking to a scaffolder who had osteoarthritis in one of his knees and he told me about FlexiSEQ. I did a bit of research into FlexiSEQ and couldn’t find a bad review about it. So I went to the local Savers and picked some FlexiSEQ up. After about 7 days I began to really notice the difference in the levels of pain in my knees, it was getting much better. It’s done wonders for me, I’m now only having to take one or two painkillers a day. Honestly, I find FlexiSEQ nothing short of miraculous what it’s done for my joint pain. I managed to do the odd run and I’m slowly getting back into it, I need it. Running puts the world right in my head, it’s been part of my whole life.
My dad used to say: when you wake up in the morning, have a smile on your face. When you go to bed at night, have a smile on your face and if you’ve learned at least one thing that day it’s been worthwhile. I’ve been recommending FlexiSEQ to a lot of people, because it works for me, I hope it works for the people I recommend it to.
Has Marc’s story inspired you? Are you standing up to joint pain or osteoarthritis? We want to hear from you, get in touch with us on Facebook and tell us your story.
