It's not that I am so smart, it's that I stay with problems longer. ~Albert Einstein
If you're looking at this picture and asking yourself what in the world is that, say hello to HBOT. HBOT is otherwise known as Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy. It's a therapy that delivers pure oxygen in a pressurized chamber. The HBOT was originally used to treat Olympic athletes who had injuries. It was found that the pure oxygen helped their bodies heal faster. Then it was found that HBOT also worked on stroke victims to help their brains heal...then the autism community found out about it. Like most biomedical treatments for autism, HBOT is not paid for by insurance and of course isn't cheap. What we do know is that thousands of parents swear that their children's symptoms, language and behavior changed for the better after doing a series of 'dives' in a HBOT chamber. Dives are the time that the child/parent go into the HBOT chamber and stays in their breathing pure oxygen.
For us, it hasn't seemed like the right time until now to try out HBOT. There were issues with other therapies, school and finding the time to travel back and forth every day for treatments. We decided to try something new this summer. With the help and advice from our DAN doctor, Dr. Spore, we are renting an HBOT chamber for a month this summer. We'll be able to do the dives at home. What finally made us decide to try it was the "what do we have to lose" idea. Money? As my girlfriend Julie said, "Money, you can always make more." True, so what's to lose from trying HBOT? We decided that now is the right time for us to try this. I'll be giving updates once we start on what we're seeing, what's it's like and whether we are seeing progress. HBOT helps increase blood flow to the brain and we know from research that the brain is able to heal itself. To me, this is really exciting and a natural way to help Aleks body and brain heal. We'll keep you posted! If you have any advice or questions, please let me know. I'll be more than happy to answer them in my future blogs.
Faith, Hope & HEALING ~ xo Melissa
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