09/03/2026
A former patient of mine, Mr. Matthew "Tanner" Smith, recently wrote a book about his multiple year struggle with a seemingly enigmatic non-obvious disease. It turned out to be decompression sickness, a disease very familiar to me. The importance of his story is that it is emblematic of patients with neurological disease that escapes convenient diagnosis by physicians. It's also emblematic of the potential of HBOT to treat neurological disease and give people back their lives. A few weeks ago Tanner reached out to me and asked me to put his story on Facebook. Here it is:
For years, I lived in a darkness that is hard to explain unless you have been there.
I was a commercial diver when I suffered a very rare diving accident. After that accident, my life changed. I lived with severe balance problems, dizziness, nystagmus, pressure in my head, memory problems, trouble speaking, light sensitivity, numbness and tingling, and falls.
Not every illness is visible. Someone can look fine on the outside while fighting a battle every single day that nobody else can see. I learned that firsthand.
I knew something was wrong, but for years I went from doctor to doctor searching for answers. My symptoms continued to get worse. There were times I was scared and wondered if I would ever feel like myself again.
Eventually, my journey led me to Dr. Paul Harch.
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy became the turning point in my life. I have actual SPECT brain scans from before and after treatment that show changes in blood flow to my brain. But those scans only tell part of the story. They can’t show what those years felt like or what it meant to finally begin finding my way back.
I’m only sharing two of my actual SPECT scans for now. The first scan shows my brain before my first treatment. The second shows my brain after just one treatment and the change in blood flow.
I can’t share all of my SPECT scans yet because I want to save part of that journey for my book, A Long Ascent. The later before-and-after scans show another part of my story and how my brain changed over the course of treatment. But what happened in my life between that first scan and my final scan is something a picture can’t tell.
That’s the story inside A Long Ascent.
Writing this book wasn’t easy. There were tears. I had to go back into parts of my life I had tried not to think about for years. I had to remember the fear, the falls, the unanswered questions, and what it felt like to watch the life I knew change around me.
But I also got to go back and remember what happened after hyperbaric oxygen therapy. I remembered the moments when I started noticing changes and when hope started coming back into my life. Looking back while writing this book made me realize just how much my life had turned around.
There were times while writing when I had to stop because the memories hit me so hard. Some were painful. Others brought tears because I knew how far I had come.
What I learned through my own journey is that my story may reach far beyond diving. Dr. Harch explained to me that brain injuries can come from many different causes and that what was learned through treating injured divers helped open the door to understanding and treating other types of chronic brain injury. My accident may have been rare, but the search for answers, the fear, and the hope of finding something that helps are not.
I didn’t write A Long Ascent just to tell people what happened to me. I went back into that darkness because somewhere there may be another person sitting where I once sat, scared, searching for answers, and wondering if things can ever get better.
If my story reaches just one person and gives them hope to keep searching and not give up, every tear I shed writing it was worth it.
I will always be grateful that my journey eventually led me to Dr. Harch and hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
A Long Ascent tells the story of what happened before, what happened after, and the long climb in between.
Please follow and share A Long Ascent on Facebook. You never know who may need to hear this story.
