All of the patients who had signed up for this program showed remarkable progress.

Ryan finished his 40 treatments and was feeling great. He headed home to Gunnison to go back to work. However, his homecoming became bittersweet and was much different than before. Even though he loved working at the hardware store and being around his family, his head was still back at the clinic in Denver. He wanted to do more treatments and work with the people he had met at the clinic. Counting nuts and bolts and stocking shelves seemed mundane after the discovery of, and his experience with, hyperbaric therapy. On blind faith, Ryan unceremoniously turned in his resignation to his father and returned to Denver.

When he showed up at the clinic, Ryan wasn't entirely disappointed that they weren't hiring. He agreed to exchange work for treatments. Cleaning, doing laundry, and running errands kept him in the game. He did not mind doing the menial chores because he had found his place in life. He was doing what he loved and was feeling better and better as time passed. Ryan remembers, "One day, a new patient was starting. He was an older brain-injured, retired Army Vietnam combat veteran. He was in bad shape and was scared about going in the "tube" [chamber]. After several failed attempts by the staff to get him in, I volunteered to work with him. Because I had spent so much time inside the chamber, I knew everything about it and how to run it. The staff and his family were amazed at how I put him at ease, explained what was going on and why, and then talked him through the whole treatment process."

Soon after, Ryan was hired as a chamber tender and spent his days running six chambers, sometimes by himself. The clinic was a bustling center and doing approximately thirty to thirty-five treatments a day. "No doubt I was tired, but it doesn't seem like work when you are doing something that you love."

A GAME CHANGER

In a short while, Ryan enrolled at the College of Oceaneering to take their div

ing and hyperbaric medicine course. This would require a year of study and a supervised internship of 500 hours. After completing all of these requirements, Ryan sat for the certified hyperbaric technologist (CHT) exam in Texas, passing it in October 2002.

After completing the CHT certification, the clinic where Ryan had been working closed its doors for financial reasons. With no other clinics hiring in the area, Ryan went back home to Gunnison and resumed his hardware store duties. Over the next few years, he began dabbling with several clinics in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Salt Lake City.

As Ryan recounts these experiences, "I didn't care for how these clinics were run, especially when it came to safety. Safety had been ingrained in me, and I would not compromise my safety practices, so it became difficult to find the right employment in this field that I loved so much." Ryan finally received certification as a safety director in hyperbaric therapy in 2004.

HOPE FOR HEALING: The second chamber in Charlie Hansen's manufacturing facility; Charlie offered Ryan to move to Boulder and treat Charlie once a day in the chamber. They would let him use the chamber the rest of the time for his patients in exchange.

A SHORT STINT WITH HYPERBARIC THERAPY

One day, Ryan's phone began ringing off the hook. A wealthy Boulder, Colorado, home audio manufacturer