HEALING THAT'S AHEAD OF THE TIMES

BY ROBERT L. FISCHER AND GRADY T. BIRDSONG

Editors Note: The Miracle Workers of South Boulder Road: Healing the Signature Wounds of War tells a dramatic story of how a severely disabled young stroke victim healed himself using an element that only nature can provide: oxygen. It also describes how he and three other "Miracle Workers" began to help others. He learned how to render this important treatment therapy to veterans returning home from the Middle East with traumatic brain injuries and related post-traumatic stress.

These Miracle Workers are healing lives with one of America's most successful integrated hyperbaric oxygen treatment and PTSD counseling programs. The following is the eighth chapter in a series of articles about this process.

CHAPTER 8 VETERANS TREATED AND HEALED BY HBOT IN THEIR OWN WORDS

In 2012, Charles "Pat" Smith, Department Adjutant of the American Legion of the State of Colorado, invited Colonel R. L. Fischer to meet a young woman who had recently been medically separated from the Army and who had just begun successful hyperbaric oxygen treatments with Dr. Paul Harch at his clinic in New Orleans.

At this meeting was the editor of the Legion's Observer Magazine, Darrel Myers, and former American Legion National Commander in 2005, Thomas Bock. The meeting was to gain a deeper understanding of this new treatment that was proving to be effective in healing concussive blast injuries suffered by our combat veterans.

Past Legion Commander Bock prefaced the reason for the meeting by telling Colonel Fischer, “Wait until you meet this young lady. She has quite a story to tell us.” Shortly after that, the very attractive young woman arrived with her friend in tow, a shy lanky young man, obviously a veteran recently out of the

military. She greeted everyone, thereby introducing herself, and then turned to her companion to introduce him, "You all will have to speak slowly. My friend is a United States Marine." That comment broke the ice, and the group truly enjoyed meeting with and listening to Margaux Mange tell her story from playing high school soccer to becoming a United States Army Military Policeman. Here is Margaux's story.

Sergeant Margaux Mange was one of the South Boulder Road clinic’s first patients. Margaux grew up in Lakewood, Colorado, playing soccer throughout her childhood and teenage years. She enjoyed the sport and became a star soccer athlete at Alameda High School. However, Margaux admitted that the primary reason she joined the Army was the promise of playing soccer for them. As she vividly described her motivation for entering the military, “The recruiter assured me that I could play on the All-Army Soccer Team, and since my father was in the Army, it made sense for me to join, even though the United States Air Force had seriously courted me to play for them instead.”