Damien, an athletic 24-year-old, was on vacation with his family at Lake Mead, Nevada, when he dove off the back of a pontoon boat, hit the bottom, and broke his neck. He woke up in a hospital 10 days later, hooked up to ventilator and unable to move due to a dislocation of the vertebrae in his neck.

He underwent a number of surgeries, including a spinal fusion. When he left the hospital three months later, his doctors told him that except for a twitch in his left bicep, he would have no movement from the neck down for the rest of his life. They were wrong.

Damien’s road to recovery began after he got out of the hospital and into an intensive rehabilitation program. But it really took off about a year ago, when he came to the Whitaker Wellness Institute for hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT). When Damien first starting coming to the clinic for HBOT, he had so little muscular control that he was unable to sit up and required a reclining wheelchair. At first, progress was measured in terms of twitches—he recalls sitting for hours and hours trying to get a calf muscle to contract. But he stayed motivated; worked very, very hard in physical therapy several hours a day, five days a week; and kept on coming in for regular HBOT treatments. And over time, it all started to come together.

Today, two and a half years later, Damien does wheelies in his wheelchair, leg presses 160 pounds, takes halting steps with a walker, and is 100 percent convinced that he will walk again. Damien, now 27, has far surpassed all of his doctors’ predictions. He is so inspired by his progress that he is writing a business plan to open a facility where people with spinal cord injuries can receive HBOT, physical therapy, and nutritional therapies in a positive, healing, caring environment. With this young man’s determination and resolve, I have no doubt that he will succeed.

— from Health & Healing by Julian Whitaker, MD