Britney came home from school today blathering on about something that she’d heard about in her class news session, as usual. Kid sisters are so annoying! Eventually, I had to take the bait and ask her to calm down and tell me exactly what portable hyperbaric oxygen chambers are all about. There’s no point in kids learning hectic terminology if they can’t explain themselves succinctly, is there?
According to Britney, hyperbaric oxygen therapy is a medical treatment that the grandmother of a girl in her class is receiving. Brit wasn’t too clear on the details but we pieced together that it’s for something to do with the side effects of diabetes. The treatment involves spending time in a specialised chamber that allows the patient to breathe air with a higher oxygen content than the norm, and thereby take more oxygen into the body.
Anyway, this girl’s grandmother has been having the treatment at a hospital, but the girl had brought in pictures of a hyperbaric chamber for home use that’s on the market. I don’t know if her gran was thinking of investing in one or what – maybe she just thought it was interesting. Evidently, Britney was pretty intrigued (what’s not to like about a big blow-up tank where you can play Fruit Crisis away from your little bro?).
It seems that that was all the info that Brit had managed to retain about the whole thing (granted, for a seven year old, she did pretty well to remember the phrase ‘hyperbaric oxygen therapy’ correctly). So I ended up having a bit of a look into it myself – hey, you never know what’s in it for you if you don’t check these things out. I wanted to know if maybe it could reduce cellulite or something.
As it happens, that kind of thing is not really the bag of oxygen therapy – it’s really geared towards more life-threatening stuff, like decompression sickness and wounds that won’t heal. Regardless, it’s worth knowing about, I suppose – you really can learn something new every day, even from an annoying seven year old.