Hanging up my scrubs.

Today was the last day of my hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT). For those who don’t know what HBOT is – and why would you? – it’s pretty simple. You lie inside a big glass tube, which is filled with pressurized pure oxygen. The theory is that the pure, pressurized oxygen environment pushes more oxygen into your cells, where it helps them regenerate and otherwise run smoothly. Obviously, I had high hopes that post-HBOT I would be as good as new, with all of my remaining cerebellar cells functioning flawlessly and augmented by lots of new ones. My dizziness would be gone. Weird nerve issues a thing of the past. No twitchiness.

No such luck.

But I do think it helped. Mainly, I notice that my stamina is a little better. Now, if I work for a few days or go into the recording studio for several hours, I am not a headache-ridden, twitchy, slightly nauseated mess afterwards. I still don’t feel my normal, robust 53%-self, mind you, but I can at least be productive without being overly destructive.

The best part about HBOT? To pass all that time, I watched every last episode of the original Star Trek series. I’ve seen them all numerous times before – when I was a kid, Star Trek was My Show – but it was, as Spock would say, fascinating to see them one right after the other. The overall themes just SHOUT at you – reason wins, human beings need to be creative, emotions are the most human of our qualities, race doesn’t mean a thing, women can work right alongside men, hate gets you nowhere, love gets you everywhere. All these years later, we can still learn a lot from Trek.