Hello, I'm David L. Wetzell, but my friends call me Doc.

I am raising money to pay for half of the cost of getting 20+ hyperbaric oxygen treatments at $125 per session at the Saint Paul Hyperbaric Oxygen Center to help me recover from the impact of carbon monoxide poisoning in my car mostly more than seventeen years ago. I found this out through an automechanic in mid-November of 2008. I'm raising half the money because I am basically trying to recover lost human capital. Thus, I plan to put my skin in the game by paying for half of the cost (or borrow the money). Yet, I'm caught in what in Economics is called a liquidity trap and need help and that is the reason for this GoFundMe campaign.

The carbon monoxide poisoning began while I was a professor of Economics in Idaho, after traveling by car there and elsewhere on mountainous roads before classes began in September of 2007. I could not smell the carbon monoxide and had foolishly taken my car to be checked into a local, Walmart auto shop. Yet, I could tell indirectly that things were not well. In Idaho, I got a nasty bout of bronchitis that lasted from the beginning of September 2007 to the beginning of January 2008. At that point, my emotional health began to slide steadily. My first semester teaching evaluations were bad; one undergrad students commented that I seemed to struggle to explain pretty simple intro to economics concepts. In the next semester, my evaluations got worse and I even needed another professor to take over a MBA quantitative methods class midway through the period.

Now, I had already lost a job as an economics professor at a private university in Mexico after two years, largely because of severe culture shock. My previous failure made me very anxious and hard on myself so I would not fail as a professor again. I got very frustrated because no matter how hard I tried, I felt myself getting worse.

I developed in Idaho a high anxiety and low energy for anything I was not totally into (based on an exacerbation of my ADHD) that combined into a propensity to make bad decisions under stress.

This bad decision-making tragically continued after I returned to Minnesota. For when I found out in mid-November of 2008 about the carbon monoxide leak, it was too much for me to handle at that time. Instead, I apparently willed myself to forget it, presuming that since it was over, I could will myself to get better.

This addled thinking entailed that I kept my closest network of friends in the dark about what had happened and what I was working through. It was an act of hubris that had some sad-bad consequences that made this past decade-plus harder for me.

But I have managed to muddle forward; by the grace of God, my family, part-time work as a tutor plus other work, and therapy/medications, etc. Also, this past year, I made an important decision to start last January in a year-long course to become certified as either a medical biller or coder.

And, more recently, I resolved that I needed more than just the training, talk therapy, etc.

For I knew that it's crucial to change your brain to change your life and that there had developed a therapy called Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy. It exposes your brain to pure oxygen that helps your immune system to fight bacteria and to generate stem cells that can create other needed cells for your body.

I had looked into this before, but my previous general doctor gave me his opinion that it was too late. Yet the specialist at the Saint Paul Hyperbaric Oxygen center I consulted with on 9/09/2025 told me that it could still make a big difference in my life. On the same day, my new general doctor vetted the idea and concluded that the risks seemed relatively minor, with the biggest risk being the loss of money from paying for it. Yet, from an economic perspective, it should help to recoup some of the lost human capital from seventeen years ago.

As such, I would ask if you would consider a gift that is meaningful to you! Thank you for your consideration. Thank you for any donation, I look forward to writing a hearty thank you. You will also get to learn more about the experience and a careful selection of how things are improving. Also, no raffles, giveaways, or returns on investment are offered in exchange for any donations made to this GoFundMe.

So, I hope you'll join me in this endeavor. I put this off because I hate asking for money and I dread the donation fatigue from all the worthy (plus some not-so-worthy) causes that exist today. But I believe I am worth the investment and will make sure it will spill over to others, especially my family who has been really good to me.

Thank you again,

David L. Wetzell, aka Doc