A little piece of heaven

A real quick post today – Nathan and Owen are home! They finished 40 dives today! Wohooooo!

Nathan was SOOO happy to be home – I think he was ready for his house, his food, his bed 🙂

Nathan just passed out and Owen and I are going to spend time together so this is it for today – Have a great weekend!

I went to see Dr. Kenny today and she told me about a new things she’s been offering her patients. It’s called exercise with oxygen therapy. Knowing how much Nathan’s benefited from HBOT thus far I was really interested in hearing about it. But instead of telling me about it – she made me try it.

Basically she had me on an oxygen concentrator with a little bike pedal type thingy. I wore a nasal cannula so the oxygen was blowing directly into my nostrils.

Here’s kinda what it looked like:

With oxygen coming from a machine like this:

Pedaling a thingy like this:

The reason for it? Increasing oxygen supply and absorption to the body.

Here’s a brief explanation that I found on the internet:

Oxygen is our most important element for life. Wellness is totally dependent upon it. So far as body function is concerned, if you don’t use it you lose it. Any activity increases the human body’s need for oxygen. So we exercise with extra oxygen and whoopie!! Just a 30-60 minute session on our home model oxygen bar displaces harmful free radicals, neutralizes environmental toxins, and destroys anaerobic infectious bacteria, parasites, and microbes. Not to mention all the cellular repair you get.

Source: http://oxygen-therapy.biz/ Check out their page for a great explanation, or do a Google search, there’s quite a lot of info about it out there.

I have to admit that after about 15 min’s of this combination, I felt REALLY good! I left feeling more energized and with a sense of well-being. My interest and curiosity was piqued.

So as usual, my mind was off like a rocket. Hmmmm. Wouldn’t this be amazing for Nathan. This would be a fabulous complement to his home program. How can I get this set up for Nathan.

Then I remembered a conversation I had with another mom a couple of days ago. She was telling me that there is a way to modify the soft hyperbaric oxygen chambers to achieve a higher ATA. Currently Nathan is diving at 1.5 ATA in a hard chamber. The soft chamber that we have at home only goes up to 1.3 ATA. So after leaving Dr. Kenny’s, I was like..hmmm…if I can get this oxygen tank that Dr. Kenny has, and get that cannula into the chamber, and modify the chamber to go to 1.5 – VOILA! Nathan would get the same benefit from HBOT at HOME!

I started calling around and I had to admit that what I discovered made me laugh. It turns out that we ALREADY HAVE an oxygen concentrator! So all this time I could’ve been able to do BOTH of these ideas – diving in a hard chamber at 1.5 with 95% oxygen, and doing exercise with oxygen therapy! We had all the tools right in our own garage!

I had no idea that you could use the oxygen concentrator with a nasal cannula, I thought it could only “blow” oxygen into the chamber. I’ve had the chamber for over a year but we stopped using it because it didn’t seem to be working. It turns out there was a pot of gold in my own backyard and I didn’t even know it 😉

Then I started thinking..well…how do I add in the exercise component?

I’ve solved one problem already – how to keep Nathan going with HBOT without having to go so far away. But what about the Exercise with Oxygen idea?

Two things occurred to me – what if I put him on the oxygen while I have him in the stander or the Merry Muscles? This way he is “exercising” WHILE receiving extra oxygen. The oxygen concentrator has wheels so I can move it around. It doesn’t have to stay with the chamber. So I can use it for dual purposes – in the HBOT chamber as well as while he’s “exercising”.

Then I remembered an infomercial I saw on TV a while back – exercise passively on a vibration platform! I started looking around and found this article: Whole Body Vibration Therapy.

I kept searching and found this study: Effects of Whole Body Vibration on a Child with Cerebral Palsy.

Of course once I started I couldn’t stop and I’ve been looking into this for a while now and … hmmm…. I think I’m on to something! No one’s ever mentioned this to me before (I’m surprised), but it seems to have a lot of potential!

Now think of this..what if we put it all together? One dive in the chamber in the morning before school, then in the afternoon, I can put him in the LiteGait to suspend him over a vibration plate, hook him up to the oxygen concentrator, and let him watch TV???!!!!!

Things that make me go…hmmmmmmmmmm…………….

PS – I didn’t paste too many links here about Whole Body Vibration or Exercise with Oxygen Therapy. There’s a TON of info on the internet about it so have a look around if you’re interested in knowing more!

I mostly try to post the good stuff. But sometimes you get things like this:

Yes, he’s fully and truly asleep.

And other times, you get this:

The good news: Nathan’s done 37 dives and only has 3 more to go!

My boys should be back home by Friday afternoon, hooooray!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!