Yes, I think I may have something in common with at least some of you who are viewing these web pages!

I am a long time survivor of an acute exposure to CARBON MONOXIDE (CO) gases. And, I'm thinking you or someone close to you has maybe also had a similar experience...!

I was discovered in my bed unconscious, Monday a.m. following Easter Sunday, April of 1965. Our furnace malfunctioned. It didn't ignite when turned on at the thermostat and the CO gases filled the air in the converted firehall in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where I was living with a few other guys (I was single at the time).

The police ambulance came and took me to Milwaukee County General Hospital where I was cared for by a doctor on duty who had (coincidentally)completed some decompression chamber experimentation with animals about 20 years earlier. I wasn't responding to any of the various treatments they used to try to revive me, so the doctor decided to put me in their chamber. they raised the atmosphere up to about 30 pounds. I showed signs of regaining consciousness and I started to respond to pain stimulants. I was in the chamber for about an hour when they decided I was coming around enough to take me out.

I received no additional treatments of any kind...!

I woke up next morning (Tuesday) shortly after 6:00 a.m. lying on a gurney in a hallway in the basement of the hospital. A nurse came by and saw I was awake. She said I could get up and go home. She pointed to a counter area down the hall and told me to tell the attendant I was leaving. I did what she told me to do and then I walked out of the hospital, got into a cab and went back to my sleeping room at the fire hall.

I had no idea what had really happened to me!

All the nurse could tell me was I had been exposed to CO and they had to put me in the hospital's decompression chamber to bring me out of it.

I did not know what was in store for me either short term and/or long term! But, believe me when I say I learned very quickly what some of the more obvious problems I would have to deal with would be! I knew something was horribly wrong with my brain! I was having severe problems trying to think clearly and I had difficulty speaking coherently, even to my closest friends! Over the next few days I realized there were several additional problems I would also have to come to terms with! And, I instinctively knew what was happening to me was directly related to my exposure to CO!!!

A couple days later I went back to see the doctor at his private practice office. I thanked him for SAVING MY LIFE in the hospital with his very unselfish decision to use the chamber to feed higher quantities of oxygen into my blood stream. I was told the hospital's position was not to do it..., because they had some legal concerns!

All he could tell me was "other than using 'oxygen' to revive CO exposure patients, he didn't know of any other kinds of treatments or therapies capable of helping CO survivors (like myself) to (try to ?) repair any mental or physical damage as the result of our individual exposures to CO."

I have since learned the after effects (a.e.'s) causing my problems were/are fairly common to people who have also survived mild to relatively severe exposures to CO!!!

This is why I decided to try to do something to improve the treatments used by these survivors to CO exposures & to also make the whole package of treatments more readily available to them!

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