A Million Little Pieces Of My Mind

I live with my daughter, Jennifer, and one of the perks of that is when she decides to try some kind of advanced medical treatment that isn't (yet) covered by insurance; because she often brings me with her.

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) is a type of treatment that involves breathing pure oxygen in a pressurized chamber. The air pressure in the chamber is two to three times higher than normal air pressure, which allows your lungs to absorb more oxygen. This extra oxygen helps one's body heal faster, fight infections, and repair damaged tissues. HBOT is used to treat various conditions, such as decompression sickness, carbon monoxide poisoning, burns, wounds, and infections. HBOT is usually done on an outpatient basis for one to two hours per session. One may need multiple sessions depending on one's condition and response to the therapy. In Jenny's case and mine, we did a 30 minute session.

Climbing into the chamber was a bit of a challenge for me, but not as bad as I feared. This is not something a person with claustrophobia would want to do!

Jenny is recovering from plastic surgery, and her purpose for the hyperbaric treatment was to help shorten the healing time. (UPDATE: It worked!) I bruise easily because of my age, so one thing we wanted to see was if it would help mine. (UPDATE: It did!) I was also told that, if I didn't sleep during the session, I certainly would sleep soundly that night! (UPDATE: I didn't, but that's an ongoing issue.)