Help Carlia & Bodhi heal their brains

Carlia, a happy wife and mother of two adorable children acquired a brain injury from a severe adverse pharmaceutical drug reaction. The injury has left her sick and fighting for her life. Her 2-year old child Bodhi also has a severe developmental delay. He cannot stand independently, walk, or speak.

 

All conventional treatments have not helped Carlia or have made things worse. The only hope is hyperbaric oxygen therapy, one of the most effective tools for brain healing. Hyperbaric oxygen has also shown remarkable results for children with developmental delays.

 

We are raising money to buy Carlia and Bodhi a hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber.

 

Carlia´s story

 

In February of 2020 Carlia was a happy, healthy 33 year old woman about to give birth to her second child. She and her husband had recently purchased a beautiful little old church by the sea, and they were living there with their little girl Tarquin.

 

They had dreams of having three children and travelling while their babies were young before settling down for a simple life.

 

Carlia with her husband Tao and daughter when they found out she is pregnant.

 

Carlia went into labor on February 18th 2020 after stepping on a bee and being stung on the foot. The shock of the sting brought on instant contractions. She gave birth at home with the help of two Midwives and a paramedic. Everything went beautifully until it was time to deliver the placenta. It wouldn’t come away from her uterus, and she rapidly started to lose large amounts of blood. An ambulance was called but by the time she got to the hospital she had lost over 3 1/2 liters of blood and needed emergency surgery plus a large blood transfusion.

 

When Carlia came out of surgery, the doctors realized that she had septicemia. She was administered a massive dose of triple therapy antibiotics via an IV and spent the night in the ICU.

 

One of the antibiotics she was given is called metronidazole. It is a known neurotoxin that can cause catastrophic side effects in a small percentage of people. It is the number one most reviewed pharmaceutical online, and the number one complaint is a sudden onset of “extreme anxiety.”

 

Unfortunately for Carlia, in her very compromised state, the effects of this drug caused devastating issues, including a life-destroying condition called akathisia.

 

The Akathisia Alliance defines akathisia as “an extremely distressing neurological disorder characterized by severe agitation, an inability to remain still and an overwhelming sense of terror.” And mentions that it is “It is well known to cause suicide.”

 

Video about akathisia:

 

Overnight Carlia´s life changed dramatically. Suddenly she couldn’t sleep, and she would wake in fits of terror over and over when she tried. She couldn't eat, had nausea, constant panic attacks and was plagued by sensations in her body like it was burning and aching inside. She suffered from vision problems, ringing in her ears, electrical zaps in her fingers, internal vibrations, numbness and tingling, brain shudders, extreme dizziness, heart palpitations and many other symptoms. She couldn’t ever relax. She would try to lay still, and her body would jerk and twitch. She became housebound, agoraphobic and couldn’t function. Carlia´s husband couldn’t work as he had to stay home to care for her and their two children.

Over the past two years and three months, Carlia has tried different medications and supplements. She has seen naturopaths, an integrative doctor, a neurologist, and psychiatrists, had acupuncture and reiki, and while she has experienced periods of remission, nothing has bought about lasting relief.

 

In November of 2021, Carlia suffered a devastating setback. The past six months have seen her condition deteriorate to where she is constantly suffering, and her quality of life is nonexistent. On top of akathisia, she now has disabling chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia and PTSD.

 

Carlia now with Bodhi, desperation in her eyes.

 

Bodhi´s story

 

When Bodhi was four months old, Carlia noticed that something about him was different. He wasn’t meeting the same milestones that his older sister Tarquin had. She took him to see a pediatrician who referred them to the pediatric neurology department at the Sydney Children’s hospital. There he was diagnosed with a severe global developmental delay.

 

At two years and three months old, Bodhi cannot walk or speak. He has hypertonia which makes it hard for him to support his body weight. It is not yet clear how much he can understand or what cognitive abilities he has. Carlia describes Bodhi as “like having a little baby in a toddler's body.” He is just starting to do things now that a baby of about nine months old would be doing.

 

Bodhi - the little sunshine for Carlia and Tao.

 

Family´s financial situation

 

Over the past year, Covid 19’s impact on Australian job sites has heavily affected Carlia´s husband’s work situation. He has also had to take considerable periods of time off work to care for Carlia and the children. These issues and both Carlia´s and Bodhi´s extensive medical costs have caused their family fall into financial difficulty and debt.

 

They applied for government disability funding for Bodhi´s treatments, but it took 18 months to be approved, and up until now, they have had to pay for everything out of pocket.

 

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy for brain healing

 

Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) is a specialized oxygen treatment that enhances your body’s natural healing process by breathing in a total body chamber where atmospheric pressure is increased and controlled. The increased oxygen at a specific pressure allows extra oxygen to reach all damaged tissues and helps the body heal. The increased pressure and oxygen are bioactive and have independent, overlapping, and interactive effects on our body and disease processes. The results are especially significant in healing the brain from various issues.

 

Dr. Harch has been the leading expert on HBOT and has treated numerous brain injuries and issues with HBOT for over 30+ years, including brain injuries, neurological diseases, developmental delays, and autism. Dr. Neubrander has treated over 4000 children with developmental issues using HBOT with excellent results. Their work shows HBOT can heal the brain from various severe conditions.

 

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber

 

The easiest way to access HBOT is to buy your own chamber. In this way, you can use it long-term, and it is much more cost-effective than purchasing sessions from a facility that leases their machines. Often, the cost of only one session is about 200 AUD, but it's not unusual to use the chamber daily for years for brain healing.

 

Please donate to help them buy a hyperbaric chamber

 

OxyLab is the leading seller of hyperbaric chambers in Australia, with reputable quality and service. The 1,5 ATA hyperbaric chamber is excellent for recovering the brain, and it's roomy enough so that it´s possible to go in with a child. It also includes training and year-long support.

 

 

Please donate today and help decrease Carlia´s and Bodhi´s suffering so that they could have a chance at normal life again!

 

 

Akathisia by the words of one sufferer

 

„It is unfathomable and indescribable, and there are truly no sufficient words in any language to adequately and completely describe akathisia. The extreme TERROR and TORMENT is beyond anything that the human body and mind were made to endure. I think of humans in two categories - those who have experienced akathisia and those who haven’t. Those who haven’t experienced it have no idea that such hell exists. Living in extreme unrelenting hell. Tortured day and night by an invisible tormentor. Existentially abandoned into outer darkness. An extreme fear of just being alive. An unrelenting fear of existence. Immobilization mixed with extreme agitation. Pathological “tickle torture“. Unable to be comforted by anyone. Impending doom that can’t be described in words. Depersonalization. Derealization. UTTERLY ALONE. The need to die as strong as the need to pee. It isn’t a choice - you HAVE to die, like you have to urinate. An extreme overwhelming urge. You don't want to die, but you have to because your MUST escape your body and mind.

 

Confusion. Bewilderment. Loss of faith. Unable to pray. Loss of family and friends because they think your suicidality is selfish. Can’t breathe. Rigid body and pain from muscles that are like rocks. Unable to relax. Rocking back and forth. Irritability. Extreme desperation. Desperate need to jump out of your skin. The need to claw off your skin. Loss of personality. Feels like your very essence and soul was removed from you. Intense health anxiety and fear of ones own body. Extreme OCD intrusive thoughts. Helplessness. Hopelessness. Powerlessness. Pointlessness. Fantasizing about death constantly. Loss of all hope. Utter despair. Trapped. Utterly trapped in a hellish alternate reality. Begging God for relief but even the Divine has forgotten you. Crying and screaming at heaven, but nothing. No relief. No grace. No help. No mercy.

 

Deep depression that years of my life have been taken from me due to chemical damage. The feeling that you will never ever be you again. You are the walking dead. Internal tremor shaking electricity all night long causing insomnia. Indifference. Numbness. Fluctuating between incessant crying and being unable to cry. Anger. Rage. Unable to laugh. Unable to feel joy. Fatigue. Unable to work. Unable to socialize. Unable to cook. Unable to clean. Unable to create. Unable to do anything fun. Unable to watch movies or TV. Unable to listen to music. Unable to eat properly. Unable to laugh. Loss of career. Loss of job. Loss of income. Loss of friends and family. Loss of identity. Loss of meaning. Loss of purpose. Loss of personality. Loss of self respect. Loss of faith. Loss of self concept.

 

Sitting bolt-upright in bed in the middle of the night feeling like 1000 demons are attacking you. The feeling of being stuck in a cage with 4 tigers, while watching your children being raped and your family being beheaded while being helpless and unable to stop it. Being told to kill my daughter with a gun or the intruders would kill my son. The impossible horror. It is torturous. Can barely recognize own reflection in a mirror. Profound shock and numbness on top of the terror. Imagine being buried alive in a coffin. The claustrophobic panic and suffocation. That's it. - that level of terror 24-7. A profound sense of isolation and alienation from all other living creatures because they could never enter into your own personal hell.

 

Extreme unrelenting dread of the future. Begging to die in your sleep every night because you could get relief but not hurt your loved ones with suicide.

 

Existential crisis daily that this level of suffering is even possible in the human experience. It’s so bad that if I had a choice to never see my loved ones again or getting rid of akathisia, I would choose getting rid of akathisia. I’d choose solitary confinement in jail over this. And remember, these words do not adequately convey the horror of akathisia, no words could.

 

When someone jumps from a high-rise burning building and dies the media says "Women dies escaping deadly fire". They don't say "women committed suicide" or "women took her own life". So in the same way, why do we say that someone with akathisia took their life. No, they jumped out of the burning building and their death was the result of their jump/escape. The fire was to blame. ”