Broken Promises

Chapter 16 - Therapy at Home

Despite the hyperbaric oxygen not having dramatic increases, I did feel comfortable enough with the progress to continue it once we got back from Florida. I looked into the center the doctor in Florida had mentioned that was sort of nearby. It turned out it was about an hour away. I made an appointment to speak with the physician and tour their facility. The doctor was aware of the previous center's work and the doctor who we had visited in Florida. We could have gone to this location originally, but we did not know it existed. The Florida center also was more specialized in neurological care.

The head physician at the more local center had become interested in hyperbaric oxygen therapy as he had multiple sclerosis and had originally begun it for personal medical use before focusing his remaining career on it. The doctor reviewed your chart and agreed to continue the same care although we would change the schedule to once a day versus multiple times a day. This would hopefully prevent tiring you out....and me.

The center also had other therapy services that they had used mainly for stroke survivors. Brain mapping was one service that had success with other neurological issues. Brain mapping, or neuroremuscularization, involves getting both halves of the brain to work together. As most people are aware, the right half of the brain controls the left side of the body, the left half controls the right side. Both halves of the brain must be able to function together if a person is to be able to perform even a seemingly simple task as walking.

Walking is a great example of both halves of the brain working together. It is also one of the most important tasks for a person. The brain mapping you had done simulates this action. You lie on a table. As one leg is elevated, the opposite arm is elevated. This action repeats for about forty-five minutes. The exercise used to be performed using about five therapists. One on each leg, arm, and head. They would each move their assigned body part as needed. As one can imagine, five therapists for one patient for one hour can get very expensive.

A stroke survivor designed a machine to mimic this exercise. It eliminates the need for so much contact time from many people. An adult can easily do the treatment by themselves. With your small size, it required me and a nurse to handle your movements. It sounds weird, but it is very simple. Usually the nurses helped with your legs, because your legs can be very rigid. It is one of those things you would have to see to fully process. Just think about trying to walk while lying on your back.

I met a man who had a stroke the year before. He was about 40 and an army veteran. When he first came in for medical treatment, he was immobile and barely able to speak. He had used both hyperbaric oxygen therapy and brain mapping for about a year. By the time he stopped services, he had improved dramatically. He proudly told me his story and wished you well.

You seemed to dislike anything that made you stretch your muscles. You had a tendency to keep them tight. The brain mapping was an excellent stretching exercise for the shoulders, hips, and knees. That alone made the machine useful even if one did not accept its use as a neurological tool. Your physical therapist quickly noticed improved flexibility a few weeks after you had been using the machine. You went five days a week and took the weekend off. You had your hyperbaric treatment first, immediately followed by brain mapping.

I cannot recall with certainty why we stopped doing hyperbaric oxygen therapy and the brain mapping. I think we went for somewhere between three to six months. I think it was more or less that we just had the feeling that things were not improving noticeably as much as we were hoping. It came down to a cost-benefit analysis decision of that we did not want to risk making you so tired that you got sick for treatments that weren't giving you the continued improvements we had hoped for.

In the end it came down to the fact that had we got you to hyperbaric therapy immediately after you were born there is a good chance that you might have had no permanent issues. It's one of the things I talked to the neurologist about who said he was also curious about it. It was just an unknown and not a standard treatment. It is possible that if used for people quickly after an event like a stroke or after something such as the heart stopping during birth like for you, immediate hyperbaric oxygen treatments might be useful. It has been shown useful for some drowning victims, and we had met some who had great improvements after them. We will just never know.