Damon’s journey

My health journey started back in late 2013. I was living in Atlanta, single at the time, and there was a week where I felt really flu-ish and sluggish. It was probably the only time in my life where I felt zero energy... almost like living in a shell.

It wasn't too long before I started feeling pain in my joints. The pain would show up in my knees, elbows, jaw, neck, and back. My joints would swell up and it would lead to inflammation in other parts of my body. It was a very strange and confusing experience as I was turning the corner to 35.

There was a naturopathic clinic in northern Atlanta and we began working through my condition with a diagnosis of Lyme disease. We did homeopathics and supplements as we looked for natural ways to heal the root cause of this chronic pain. However, I still needed to address the day-to-day needs of pain management just to function.

So there was a parallel track as well to see a rheumatologist, who diagnosed my condition as seronegative rheumatoid arthritis. This is the kind of RA that has the symptoms of arthritis but lacks the antibody proof of RA. Regardless of the diagnoses, I was happy to get aspirations done on my joints which drained the extra fluid building around my joints from systemic inflammation.

After nearly a year of doing homeopathy and supplements, the pain level drastically went down. Unfortunately though, I never finished the homeopathy protocol from the naturopathic clinic. For me, the reduced pain level was enough as I wanted to stop spending all that money on treatments.

That decision came at the beginning of 2015 and I was ready to move on with my life.

And to some extent, I did. There was still residual pain in my jaw but for the most part, I moved on and even won two city championships in doubles tennis.

Fast forward a few years after meeting Kara, we got married in 2019. At the beginning of that year, I noticed other joint pain starting to return. So I went back to the same naturopathic clinic. We did another round of homeopathy and supplements, but this time there wasn't a change. I began seeing another rheumatologist to start getting aspirations again as I was taking an incredible amount of Advil. It was now a process of managing pain, but I wasn't making any progress in healing it.

We moved our family to Kansas in 2021. Our little girl, Isabella, had been born and since my job was remote and flexible, we had the opportunity to be near family so we moved to Wichita where my wife was raised. Surprisingly, Wichita has a strong presence of natural healing providers so there's quite a bit of opportunity to explore here.

I setup care with another rheumatologist to help with aspirations for my joints, because that was really the quickest way to experience relief from the swelling and inflammation. But we were still looking for answers. We were still trying to understand what was going on with these autoimmune flare-ups.

2023 was the year we tried everything. I did acupuncture. I did the harmonic egg which uses light and sound therapy to create resonant frequencies in your body. I did colonics to clean out waste from my intestines. And I also did hyperbaric oxygen.

In hyperbaric oxygen treatments, you lay down in a chamber and put on an oxygen mask. You breathe pure oxygen for 60 minutes while the pressure of the chamber pushes the oxygen deep into your cells. We worked with a local chiropractor and agreed to do multiple rounds of sessions, 60 in total, over the latter half of 2023. There wasn't a dramatic difference at the time, but as my wife and I reflected on 2024, it was clear that there was less pain in my body.

My health journey continues to zig and zag as we explore different treatments. For those of you who know the journey of chronic pain, you know the ebbs and flows... the desire to try new things can be met with physical and emotional exhaustion.

In late 2025, my wife had an idea.

Start a wellness studio in Wichita with the only comfortable, sit-down, hyperbaric oxygen chamber available in the area. That's how we launched O2 Renew Studio.

Hyperbaric oxygen can play a role in helping people with chronic pain, accelerating recovery, and boosting overall immune health. If you're here today with a journey that doesn’t make sense, we know how that road feels. We encourage you to come in and try hyperbaric oxygen for yourself.