An Ipswich grandmother left with debilitating pain after undergoing cancer treatment has revealed the unconventional way she finally found relief.
For two years after radiation treatment for breast cancer, Kaylene Stokes suffered debilitating pain down her side.
“It just ached, you couldn’t lie on that side, you couldn’t do anything,” she said.
Doctors dismissed it until an MRI eventually revealed she had a radiation injury which about 10 per cent of cancer patients suffer from.
Stokes feared the pain would never go away. She then tried Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy.
“It just kept abating all the time and eventually — I virtually have no pain,” she said.
The treatment involves spending around an hour in a pressurised room with an atmosphere equivalent to being 14 metres below sea level.
The patients are exposed to a very high dose of oxygen through a special mask.
The extra oxygen helps direct more blood to damaged tissue in the body, allowing new blood vessels to grow.
“We’re actually healing it by getting the body to recognise that it’s been injured,” Dr Susannah Sherlock said.
“It’s something that requires daily treatment over weeks.”
In Australia, Hypobaric Oxygen Therapy is covered by Medicare and most health insurers for cancer survivors and radiation injuries at accredited clinics.
Wesley Hyperbaric in Queensland is lobbying for the therapy to be more widely covered, with new research claiming the method could help more conditions.
“Things like inflammatory bowel disease over in the US, they’re starting to treat more and more,” Wesley Hyperbaric chief executive Aiden Turner said.
“We’re seeing a lot for long COVID as well and also for traumatic brain injury.”
Stokes had 40 sessions and is now doing things she once feared she was missing out on.
“I wouldn’t be able to go camping with my kids, now I’m going camping with them, going camping with my grandchildren,” she said.