Dear Chairman Burton and distinguished members of the Committee, thank you for allowing me to testify and represent the parents of this nation who want to share with you the remarkable results of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy for their children with Autism and brain damage.

When my daughter, Jessica, was born in 1973 her brain was damaged from loss of blood during delivery through a slit in the umbilical cord. She was born dead, resuscitated and given ice cold blood transfusions as was I. As her damaged brain swelled the seizures began. In those days babies like Jessica went to institutions, not home with their parents. In spite of the resistance from hospital staff, I chose to take her home. The Federal Law would not be passed for another two years even allowing a child like Jessica into the school system. We had many battles ahead of us and today I am fighting for the babies yet to be born so that they and their families are spared what we had to endure and are still enduring.

I gave up my teaching career to care for her. When she was four years old I gave birth to healthy, gifted twin girls. Divorce is much higher in families with children with disabilities and only the strong marriages survive. Mine did not. The girls and I were forced to go on SSI, welfare, food stamps and Medicaid. It was frustrating and degrading to have two college degrees and to be living below the poverty level and accepting government help with no alternatives. Disabilities in a family are devastating not only emotionally, but financially which in turn makes more people dependent on the government.

This all could have been prevented for our family for just $3. 58 an hour's worth of oxygen. Loss of blood is one of the non-approved conditions for treatment with Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBO). I strongly believe now that if she had been treated with HBO immediately, she may have gone home perfectly normal. Instead I was sent home with a seizuring, spastic, screaming infant with no referral for any therapy or for any support.

In 1979, when Jessica was six years old and the twins were two, I started a small support group for parents whose children had disabilities. We shared our hopes and sorrows and most of all we supported each other and knew we were no longer alone. We discovered we had power too. When a mother, Donna, with a two year old son who was blind and needed leg surgery called us because the hospital wouldn't let parents stay overnight, we met with the hospital administration and had the policy changed. She slept on a cot in her son's room that night. We grew in strength and number. New mothers knew nothing about the services we did, so a newsletter "MUMS Matchmaker" was developed to get information out to those who couldn't attend meetings. Thousands of parents now had a voice to share their emotions, problems and helpful solutions. Milwaukee Children's hospital reestablished the Parent Rooms on each floor because of our editorial complaint in the MUMS newsletter.

As parents of children with rare disorders joined, we established a matching service to link them with each other. Because of the uniqueness of this service, over the years MUMS grew to be international and now has over 19,300 members from 54 countries covering 3400 diagnoses. Over two thousand Professionals joined and refer parents to us for help.

In 1995, through the exchange of newsletters from England, I discovered that 500 children with Cerebral Palsy in England were being treated with HBO and were improving. One article told about Linda Scotson's 16 year-old son who went from being blind, deaf and in a wheelchair; to seeing, hearing and riding a two-wheel bike no handed. This seemed to me to be impossible so I called Linda in England and she said she had a large chamber in her living room in which she treated him and other children and verified their improvements.

After receiving more HBO information anonymously about people coming out of comas and "Idling neurons" becoming active in the brain using HBO, I decided to share this information with my Medical Board of Advisors and five parents to see what they thought. My Pediatric Neurosurgeon and two parents, Laurel & Diane, went to investigate Dr. Neubauer's clinic in Florida where he was treating off-label conditions. The parents each got 14 treatments for their daughters and saw amazing improvements. They were so excited when they returned that Laurel raised money and put a chamber in her home and Diane's husband tried to build one out of a propane tank.

Their experiences made me decided to publish an article about Hyperbaric Oxygen in our MUMS newsletter in 1997 and the response was an amazement to even me. You see when your child has brain damage the doctors tell you there is nothing that can be done. Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy gave us hope - our only hope.

Naive parents willing to pay cash started knocking on the doors of hospitals with chambers only to be turned away. We were shocked! Parents in the Military on bases with huge multi-placed chambers were also turned away. Parents sent MUMS articles they found about HBOT and we developed a packet of information and started distributing it. Parents started going to England and Canada for treatments and shared their experiences more information for our HBO packet. With the increased demand for HBOT from parents, existing free-standing wound care clinics and new clinics started to treat our children. Parents and grandparents whose children had improved opened clinics.

As parents reported back to MUMS of the existence of these HBO clinics we started a list of clinics to share with interested parents. MUMS became the clearinghouse for parents to find clinics and for clinics to get listed if they were willing to treat off-label. Parents from all over the world started contacting MUMS and sharing their experiences the first to be treated in Germany and Malaysia and France. A group of parents in South Africa bought a chamber and were treating their children and shared their testimonials. Presently we have 131 HBO free standing clinics listed that will treat off-label conditions. In addition in England there are 100 clinics and 11 in Scotland treating Multiple Sclerosis for free through a charitable trust and they have opened their doors to children with brain damage for a small fee.

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