40 sessions

Good Morning all

We have completed the initial 40 HBOT sessions. Although the results have not been as spectacular as the poster-boy for HBOT, we still have had very discernible improvements. Shawna has now been doing her treatments solo which would never have been possible before. She has been able to watch tv on occasion but mostly enjoys looking out at us and laughing at us when we are silly. We have decided with input from most of her therapists to continue with another round of 40 HBOTs because of the gains she has experienced. We will be taking two weeks off though while we put our family life back together and increase Shawna's therapy at home again. Pool therapy will soon begin again, and hopefully we can still fit a very busy therapy schedule in with the Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday HBOT sessions.

Physically Shawna has shown improvements in her ability to walk(of course with assistance) and her range of motion with her right arm. Her left arm and leg are moving more and more all the time. The spasticity or tone in her left side have been very diminished if not almost gone. As a result, Shawna is able to center her head at will and able to track right to left and back again. Many times now she has surprised us with that ability. She still experiences trouble with the Apraxia and stays looking left in a crowd. She has also shown that she has some extremely good days and conversely extremely bad ones too. The differences are stark and we are able to see them and sometimes alleviate pain or discomfort by repositioning or administering Tylenol.

Shawna has also shown a good increase in the ability to swallow even though we temporarily halted the swallowing therapy. We will be right back at it with also a scope to determine if she is having silent leaking into her airway. Although the thrush is not gone it is diminished and now that Shawna can swallow the nyistat, it is more under control.

She has also become more vocal and her laughter is almost to the stage of prior her accident. While we enjoy her new found abilities we constantly pray that she will be able to communicate clearly her needs.

We stand firm in the knowledge that God always provides our daily needs and even if we don't get everything we had hoped for we still experience His care and protection in all aspects of life and receive what He has determined is good for us. Thanking everyone for their continued prayers and assistance, we continue to lay our needs before our Heavenly Father.


Yours in Christ

Al, Deb and Shawna Bethlehem and family

28 of 40

Good evening all.


To date we have completed 28 of the initial 40 HBOT sessions that were planned. We can say at this point that there are definite differences which have been seen by all who work with Shawna and her close friends and relatives. We are so extremely thankful to God for giving us this blessing.

The treatments have not been without some difficulty though. Shawna has been able to get to the maximum pressure (2.88 ATM) now for the last 9 treatments. This has definitely assisted in getting rid of the thrush. There is only a small skim left on her tongue which we are now able to treat also with Nyastat along with the HBOT. Deb meanwhile is not able to continue to be in the chamber as it is affecting her eyes because of a stigma behind her left eye. She has been getting headaches as well and thus has to stop. This leaves me and aunt Ruth to be the ones to accompany Shawna on her journey. Twice also Shawna has been able to do the chamber solo. When I go in with her, aside from being very cozy, my metabolism is very fast and I generally produce a lot of surface skin heat. Combined with pure oxygen this process speeds up even more and the tube starts to get very humid and fogged up. When this happens Shawna begins to cough a lot and causes her some discomfort towards the last 15 mins of treatment.


We are hoping to get a SPECT scan next week on Wednesday in Newmarket. This will show us in colour which areas of Shawna's brain are functioning and combined with another scan after another 40 sessions will show if there is continued improvement. In September we are scheduled to speak in a volunteer panel to Toronto ABI association about our experiences with HBOT, and hopefully be able to assist with the advancement of this therapy so it can be readily available for TBI/ABI patients through OHIP.

Please continue to pray for Shawna's recovery using this therapy because we know that all blessings flow from God's hands only.


Al, Deb, Shawna Bethlehem and family