In January 2016 my mother suffered a
severe Aneurysm and a stroke and was in a critical condition for
three months. After she emerged from her coma she was in a
vegetative state and her prognosis was very bad and she was released
from rehabilitation for lack of improvement.
When she came home she was still hospital level care and needed two
people 24/7 to care for her.
Our family was of course devastated and desperate and so I started
researching everything I could on brain injury and came across a
website by a Dr Harch in America who had been researching Hyperbaric
Oxygen Therapy for Traumatic brain injury for over 30 years. I
devoured all the videos and peer reviewed studies, clinical studies
and read his book “The Oxygen Revolution” and studied text books on
hyperbaric Therapy and became convinced it would be mums best shot
at recovering some of her faculties.
I knew that the dead cells in the brain could not be recovered but
there is an area around the dead cells called the Ischaemic Penumbra
which is an area of cells that are damaged and in a “stunned” state
that could perhaps be recovered if they could get enough oxygen and
energy.
After four months of intense study, developing our own protocols for
mum based on my research and getting sign off from mums’
neurosurgeon, whose opinion was that it couldn’t hurt and might
help, I then went on the search for a facility where she could have
this done and quickly realised there wasn’t anywhere nearby.
Auckland and Christchurch Hospitals had hyperbaric clinics but in
New Zealand this therapy is only approved and funded for burns,
crush injuries, diabetic wounds and gas gangrene and even then it
would be impossible to get a referral from the provinces to these
facilities. I then discovered there were private mild hyperbaric
clinics operating around the world and that there were even a select
few in New Zealand.
In contrast to the medical level facilities these chambers were
monoplane (for one person only) and only ran supplemental oxygen as
opposed to 100% medical oxygen (because of tight regulations around
the use of medical oxygen) and the chambers typically only went up
to 1.4 or .1.5 Atmospheres (i.e. 1.4 to 1.5 the amount of pressure
at sea level or the equivalent of being around 4 to 5 metres under
water).
For brain injury this was the exact recommended pressure rating that
Dr Harch recommended.
For wounds etc ideally a higher 2 to 2.5, even 3 atmospheres is
recommended but not for brain injury.
During my search though managed to get mum access to a multiplace
hyperbaric chamber through an acquaintance who had one.
Mum had 33 sessions in their chamber - It was quite a sight to see
as we had to put her in on the forks of a forklift.
She was lowered to an equivalent of .15 atmospheres and was put on
100% oxygen for an hour and a half in total.
After about three weeks we started noticing improvement in her
alertness, speech, coordination. They were still small but definite
then after the 33 treatments when the chamber had to be taken off
line for maintenance and mum had a chance to recover from the
fatigue of the treatments (hyperbaric sessions are a bit like
physical training in that they can be exhausting. The body is
growing new blood vessels and repairing tissue at a faster rate and
this tires the body subsequently it is usually after a few days of
rest that the improvements come)
A few days after stopping the block of treatments ( we had hoped to
get to 40 treatments before having the break, the recommended
amount, but this wasn’t possible) Mum suddenly made rapid and huge
gains.
Every day saw new breakthroughs and we were reinforced in our belief
in
hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Mum cognitive processing has now
improved so much . Her short and long term memory has come back to
almost normal, she can read entire novels, do maths again and write
and most importantly she can laugh, feel emotion and compassion. She
is our mum again.
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy has been my mums miracle and I wanted more
than anything to share this knowledge and this therapy and to make
it available to others that is why we opened O2plus. We hope it will
be of benefit to you and your loved ones.
Please explore the science behind it, read the clinical studies,
read the books and watch the videos and ask us. We want to help.