Maybe it was taking a Fluconazole after my doctor notice some tearing “downstairs” at my annual physical when he was checking out my surgical scar from July.
Maybe it’s that I am on my seventh session of hyperbaric chamber oxygen therapy and the results starting to compound. Protocols say it takes about ten to feel a difference and my full protocol will be sixty so I’ve got a ways to go.
Maybe it’s just the absolutely gorgeous fall weather filtering in the perfect amount of light for that ideal temperate middle ground of low heat and humidity that makes being outside a joy.
Maybe it’s just a fluke. But today I feel almost human again.
I felt joy in being the adult responsible for running the household today. I managed loads of laundry, housekeeping, a proper grooming session of my own body, a grocery run into town, a decent workout, and of course, time in the hyperbaric chamber.
My husband is still struggling mightily with whatever combination of infections, stress, and post-viral damage is ripping up his immune response. He is usually the one caring for me. But today I was able to care for us both.
My husband and I are both sick. It’s the kind of “not quite respiratory, not quite sinus, not quite right” viral infection that always seems to take twice as long to clear as you expect.
Aging and stress is part of it but so is the damage we both have from covid-19 infections that turned into pneumonia. We’ve never been the same.
The good/bad news is that everyone we know seems to have the same basic set of physical degradations that we do. Varying levels of impact are met with varying levels of healthcare and wellness routines. From peptides to hyperbaric oxygen chamber therapy, no one is taking this shit sitting down.
I was already chronically ill before the world changed forever. It’s now common to have a flavor of autoimmune inflammatory chaos. I feel both less alone but much more frustrated at the crisis in American healthcare.
My medical billing codes as ankylosing spondylitis (arthritis in my spine) and psoriatic arthritis (psoriasis but it’s inside your body and it hurts!) but the tldr is constant pain, occasionally losing the capacity to walk, and the persistent exhaustion of chronic inflammation.
As we both cancel travel plans (for a charity event we’ve supported for years) and struggle to manage food and medication, I am reminded of the grief we are all carrying around.
As the world goes on with the “before times” as l memory for older generations, and the idea of any kind of positive “before” is unimaginable to the young, the grief comes and goes. The elders we stopped civilization to keep alive are dead or dying and our youth are distraught.
I remember being so angry and afraid for him when he left for cruise as lockdowns went into effect. I begged him to cancel the trip. I was afraid he would get sick or die.
He didn’t share those fears. He got stuck on the boat for an extra week or two, as no port would let them dock. He had the time of his life. I was locked in an apartment in Manhattan.
I don’t think he ever got Covid. For which I am grateful. I know far too many who did. I know many angry Zoomers grieving lost high school and college years.
Housing went up by 50% as we printed to survive the crisis. Strange times for us all and now we face the Great Ravine where the choices we made catch up to us.
My investment thesis of an increasingly chaotic world was novel when I first began and now it’s the same pitch every Tom, Dick and Harry espouses. What was once unclear is now the consensus. I am I am alive to see it and find no satisfaction in being right. The grief is all around us. Grief is for the living.
My immediate family is in poor shape. Health troubles across almost everyone along with varying degrees of emotional stress.
One tries to responsibly pursue “restorative” activities that give you back energy like meditation, light exercise or movement, and if you happen to be lucky like we are some supplemental oxygen.
The various efforts of relaxation techniques like non-sleep deep relaxation. Box breathing to interoception still has the baseline stress metrics you’d expect of a serious illness or a loss.
I love Carl Sagan’s Contact. I first read the book in my middle school years and was allowed to watch the movie starring Jodie Foster despite having a very limited “screen time” diet.
As I got older I was allowed to watch edifying science fiction and book adaption only if I had read the source material. Contact passed both tests
It’s a beautiful story of faith and science about on a radio astronomer who finds a signal from alien intelligence which kicks off a planet wide space race to make contact.
There is a scene in the film where our protagonist Dr Arroway is set to launch a machine which we humans do not fully understand but is presumed to be some sort of transportation device.
Just as the countdown nears zero, she loses contact with the ground team. Roaring machinery and turbulence drowns her voice as she repeats over and over “I am OK to go” until a blind colleague finally picks her voice out of the static. The capsule is let go. I won’t spoiler it.
I’m OK To Go
I had a little moment of being out of contact myself today. I am now the proud owner of a hyperbaric chamber but still getting used to the machine. Alex, watching me as I adjusted, communicated with me through the glass with gestures.
Hyperbaric chamber oxygen therapy has roots in diving as managing pressure changes is an important aspect of safety for underwater and high altitude work.
When diving you don’t give a thumbs up to show you are alright. Thumbs up actually means ascend. You give the OK sign to communicate that you are doing fine.
The “OK” hand signal in diving is formed by touching the tip of the thumb and index finger together to make a circle, with the other three fingers extended upward.
Even as I was a little dizzy and struggling to acclimate I was ultimately “ok to go.”
I slept rather poorly last night. I get anxious before medical appointments. Interfacing with America’s medical system can range from merely uncomfortable to actively hostile so I suppose some heightened vigilance isn’t irrational.
I really yearn for an uptick in qualitative metrics I associate with higher quality of life like energy for my favorite physical activities (weightlifting and hiking). The fatigue and stress from the pain, and downstream side effects are constant reminders of poor health.
So I am looking for improvements in basic markers like my CRP and Sed Rate as those inflammatory markers should coincide with the qualitative improvements.
An auspicious pair of numbers for today’s date and I started something new which has been in the works since January began today. Our long awaited hyperbaric chamber has arrived and been fully set up in our yellow barn.
A lazy boy lounger and oxygen under two atmospheres of pressure.
It feels good to begin a positive focused wellness activity after what was otherwise a chaotic week of travel, geopolitics and violence.
As expected, it is not fun living through my own investment thesis. So you better believe I test my theories on myself. I want to survive the Jackpot.
Before Trump’s inauguration, we decided to purchase a hyperbaric chamber after one of our mutuals told us about his HBOT trial at a conference in the fall. It went very well for him and the research is promising for inflammatory conditions.
Over the winter break I happened to be in a city where I could test HBOT cheaply and was very impressed with the results in only ten sessions during a flare in my autoimmune condition. Crimping from Bryan Johnson
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) involves breathing pure or nearly pure oxygen (95-100%) in a pressurized chamber at anything above atmospheric pressure (2 ATA is equivalent to being 33 feet under seawater).
The increased pressure enhances the lungs’ ability to absorb oxygen, boosting oxygen levels throughout the body. The therapy aims to promote rejuvenation by increasing oxygen concentration in tissues, supporting healing, cellular repair, and vascularization.
This sent me down a rabbit hole as I did a bunch of deep dives, got some text books and came to a simple conclusion after a lot of medical papers that it’s pretty simple.
It’s almost philosophically the way of life in the mountain west. Oxygen and pressure work on the biomechanics of a functional body. Alas getting my basic market model to Montana ended up being a cluster fork of issues. We placed the order in January.
For months we waited for what we’d been told would be a 6-8 week process. Alas all hell broke loose. We had tariffs uncertainty with the importer and the OEM.
I have now, in September, after a long journey but a simple set up process, begun my first intensive protocol for autoimmune diseases on our own hyperbaric chamber.
Love your body enough to put it under pressure and take a deep breath.
I will complete a minimum of 40 sessions (5 sessions weekly) at 2 atmospheric pressures, in a hard chamber from OxyRevo with each session 90 minutes while breathing 100% oxygen for 20 minutes separated by a 5 minute break.
If you are interested and see strip mall options note that these are not consumer grade machines. The protocol requires a hard chamber to achieve that pressures. It’s quite a bit higher than soft chambers on the market.
There are risks associated with HBOT from correct pressurization issues to impacts like tinnitus. The more prepared you are to adapt to changing pressure with breathing techniques and equalization (looking to divers for these protocols) the happier your central nervous system will be.
Concurrently we are moving through a massive global economic reorganization that impacts how one plans for even local businesses like a med spa.
So while we’ve purchased our first chamber before the tariffs have gone into effect, it seems reasonable to get ahead of the game and begin the sourcing process.
In a twist that one of my friends described as “an extremely Julie situation” I’m heading to Istanbul tomorrow. I’m in Europe so I’m actually going to drive. Any recommendations for hotels, great meals and must see sights are most welcome.
This then turned into an offer of a tour of the factory by their team (since we are in the market as we plan out our Montana medical spa) that was topped off by an offer to discuss the experience on my favorite podcast.
Apparently manufacturing complex medical equipment in this new era of tariffs and bilateral trade agreements is a topic of interest to many people as Turkey may end up a better trading partner than China for many categories of sophisticated equipment.
The Trump administration is making attempts to reorient more of the world under our trade & defense umbrella rather than China is obviously on everyone’s mind. Turkey is an advanced manufacturing industry from which I have imported in the distant past for textiles so I’m sure I’ll learn a lot from this trip.
