How desperate am I to get better? Three words: hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

A few months back, I was up in Minnesota, following an experimental treatment at the University of Madison, and I got to talking to a friend's wife about something called hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT). She said she thought it might help me and that I should look into it. I did, but the cost is stratospheric, so I wanted to do a bit more research and thinking before committing.

Well, my research and thinking are done and I'm gonna go for it. Starting today, I will do 40 one-hour sessions, spread out over 8 weeks. What exactly does a session entail? Not much, actually. I get rolled into an acrylic tube -- same mechanism they use to insert you into an MRI machine -- and then (drum roll) I lie there. Yup, one whole hour of just staring up at the ceiling. Luckily, there's enough room inside the tube for me to hold some reading materials, so I've got my Kindle loaded, a few Economists, some New Yorkers... I'm ready. Oh, and naturally I have my iPod, freshly packed with four Beatles remasters in uncompressed Lossless sound!

Why do I think this HBOT stuff will work? Well, it just makes sense. All it does is use a bit of extra pressure (1.5 atmospheres) to push pure oxygen deeper into tissue than it would normally reach, which helps damaged tissue heal. In my case, HBOT is thought to reawaken stunned brain cells and to promote stem cell growth. The stem cell growth is KEY because stem cells could actually grow into the kinds of cells I've lost, helping my brain to become good as new.

Hope this works!