Day One of HBOT Therapy

Mom and Naomi in our 3-person bench seat dive tank just after the 2nd dive.

We successfully completed two dives today!

Dive 1 started out a bit rough. Naomi, remembering her fear from the coffin-like HBOT from a year ago, started crying. Benjamin saved the day! He said, "Turn on the video now and everything will be fine". So Naomi started watching The Boxcar Children and agreed to do it for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, she was engaged enough in the movie to continue going for 1-1/2 hours. We went down to about 30 feet, and our ears popped a lot. The only uncomfortable parts were when the tank pressurized and de-pressurized. When we were "on the bottom" we watched the movie while breathing oxygen through a mask.

Naomi had a constant or "free-flow" oxygen mask. I had an "on demand" mask. I liked hers better, but there is only one of the constant oxygen masks per tank. Three people can easily be accomodated in these chambers which do resemble a bathosphere with a bench inside.

Naomi wasn't much interested in doing all of the therapy I had planned today, but was able to do about 30 seconds of moving her ankle up and down during the second dive. Movie #2 for today was Nim's Island. The HOC where we are diving has over 500 movies on demand for us to watch.

Benj and Alex went for an hour dive in the second tank during our first session today. Alex and Naomi both had slight headaches after they were done.

Pictured above is the 2-person tank Alex and Benj went into.

The "on demand" masks are heavy and you have to hold them to your face, making so your hands are not free. For the second dive, I got a mask with straps and went about figuring out how to make it work. It does work, but then you have this really heavy mask hanging off of your face.

Naomi's impression of Day 1:

If anyone wants to try it Note that your ears might hurt After.

and It was okay and I felt I was crunched and My legs hurt from sitting in one place too long. Tomorrow I will remember that I can stand up and move around in the tank.

When I looked at my hurt thumb before I went into the chamber, it looked bad. But when I got out after the first dive, it was all pink and looked better (mom note: 2 weeks ago Naomi fell while riding her bike and scraped ALL of the skin off of the top of her thumb. While it has been healing right along, it was definitely, surprisingly better after the first dive).

My highlight of today was going to eat lunch at the White Spot (mom note: White Spot is a Canadian Chain sort of like an upscale Denny's).

Back to mom:

More about our accomodations:

We are staying at Cardiff Place in Victoria. It's a former 17-unit urban cohousing condominium. Since it was formerly cohousing then there are lot's of common spaces for us to roam. We are in a reasonable-sized guest room with a full bathroom next door (and the common laundry facilities one door beyond the bathroom). On the same floor is the great common room, which has a livingroom area, diningroom and commercial kithchen. We have lots of space to do our homework and cook our meals (the common room was reserved for today which is why we ended up at the kids favorite--White Spot). Here is a picture of the very comfortable common room.