Two steps forward, one step back

Brain damage is extremely difficult to cope with especially because there aren't many standard or alternative treatments available. I am not interested in any pharmaceutical treatments so we have been trail blazing in the area of natural therapies.

When we moved into our new home here in Coatepec back in August 2008, we were fairly surprised to find there was an ozone clinic across the street. We had been regularly including ozone therapies into our lives for years so to have a clinic in front of our house was quite serendipitous. I had one ozone autohemotherapy session at the clinic. The doctor performed this by extracting a vial of my blood, bubbling it with ozone, and re-injecting it into my blood stream. I felt a positive difference after the one session: more alert, peppier, and the feeling that this just might be the way to heal my ailing brain. If a few moments of oxygen deprivation contributed to the brain damage, then it would make sense that supercharged oxygen, aka ozone, in my bloodstream would facilitate regeneration.

I couldn't continue the sessions at the clinic for a couple of reasons: 1) Cost- at around $100 per session, we couldn't afford it. 2) My hard to pick veins- it's always been really difficult to find a good vein to pick in my body. There was no way I could have regular needle pick sessions to get the ozone into my blood.

Since we already owned two ozone machines, we could create the ozone I needed but how to inject it into my bloodstream? My first thought was a PICC line but learned that they aren't practical for long-term use. Another option was the BardPort:
It's a port that is surgically installed and connected directly to a central line in the body. This eliminates the need to look for veins. In the world of western medicine, this is used by cancer patients to receive chemotherapy. In the U.S., our request to have one installed for ozone therapy would have been vehemently denied. Because the rules are more lax here, we were able to get one installed Febraury 2009. Now this accomodation of our request also had a downside. The doctor who installed it wasn't particularly knowledgeable on the subtle workings and proper maintenance of it. We were pretty much on our own which of course, led to trouble.

For about a month, all seemed fine. We were ozonating saline solution and then running an IV drip through my port. I was definitely feeling the benefits, mainly that I had more energy and less down time.
Then the port became clogged (probably with dried blood) and the first time, the doctor who installed it came by and used a needle filled with saline to push the clog on. This turned out to be a bad idea because when it clogged again, Diego used force to push the clog on only to have the catheter disconnect from the port. This was in mid-April '09. We bought another port (very expensive btw) and scheduled surgery for May 20th. What should have been a fairly simple procedure resulted in complications. Unbeknownst to us or the doctors, when the catheter disconnected from my port, it traveled through my bloodstream and ended up wrapping itself around my heart. So the surgeons spents nearly an hour and a half looking for it. Since I was left open for so long with a lot of poking & prodding, bacterial colonies entered the open wound and set up camp. With permission from Diego, the surgeons proceeded with the installation of the new port and closed me up.

We later went to Xalapa for an x-ray to find that the catheter was wrapped around my heart. We consulted with a new doctor who said that if I don't feel any symptoms such as shortness of breath or chest pains, I should be ok. The catheter around my heart was the equivalent of harmless space junk, and we could deal with it when removing the new port sometime in the future.

With that behind us, I believed I was ready to begin receiving ozone IV. Diego and I realized that saline drips caused the port to clog easily so he investigated another way of getting ozone into my bloodstream. The answer was surprisingly simple and sort of obvious: inject ozone gas directly into the blood. Ozone gas will not cause an embollism like regular air will. And it worked beautifully! No more needing to sit for an hour and a half to complete the 250 cc ozonated saline drip. Just slowly inject ozone gas through a butterfly needle in the port.

We did this for about 5 months and during that time, I was not really improving. In fact, I had many terrible, brain fatigue days. We couldn't figure it out. Then in the fall of 2009, we noticed that the port area seemed infected. We began treating it with hydrogen peroxide and ozone cupping. We thought we had it under control but in December, I became really ill with fever, vomiting, loss of appetite- all signs of an infection in the blood. Apparently, the port had remained infected since the second port implant and using it transferred the infection to my blood. We stopped using the port to give me ozone IV.

I had no choice but to turn to antibiotics. I called my sister, a family doctor in Dallas, TX, and she prescribed the antibiotics. A three week antibiotic course cleared the infection from my blood, but that was only half the battle. The infection around the port still persisted rendering it unusable for the time being.

At this point, any doctor would have advised me to have the port removed. I wasn't ready to give up on it though, and I still wanted the ozone IV treatment. Fortunately, we had a secret weapon. From the ozone doctor across the street, Diego learned how to perform sub-dermal ozone injections. He was able to shoot tiny blasts of ozone under my skin aiming for and obliterating the bacterial colonies. We have been battling the infection with a combination of sub-dermal ozone injections, cupping the area with ozone, and hydrogen peroxide rubs. Six months later, we've made remarkable progress and have nearly won the war. I expect to be able to use the port soon :)

The irony of what I've gone through in the past year isn't lost on me. The very thing that was to help my brain heal (the BardPort for ozone IV) ended up setting me back, waaay back. But I soldier on!