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Brain-Injury Treatment Changes Brandon Woman's Life

Tribune photo by JULIE BUSCH

Mary Ellen Gottlieb packs her clothes as she prepares to move to Marrero, La., next week to work for Baromedical Research Institute of New Orleans.

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By LAURA FRAZIER | The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 6, 2009

BRANDON - Mary Ellen Gottlieb spent five years mired in frustration, dealing on a daily basis with the lasting effects of a stroke she suffered in 2003. Until recently, the Brandon woman, 50, was resigned to the notion that she might never fully recover or work again.

But one day in November, she pressed the "play" button on a YouTube video, and serendipity came to call.

A stroke at age 45 left Gottlieb with hemispheric facial paralysis and body weakness, random memory glitches and haywire motor skills. With little hope but time in sight, she applied for disability benefits and hunkered down at home, where she passed the time "talking on the phone and surfing the Internet."

Fast-forward to November, when Gottlieb — trolling for information about stroke recovery treatments — came across a series of YouTube videos that would alter the course of her life.

The clips chronicled the stunning progress of brain-injury patients treated with hyperbaric oxygen therapy administered by physician Paul Harch of Louisiana, a leader in the field of hyperbaric medicine.

"They showed a young man who [before treatment] was strapped to a wheelchair all slumped over. He couldn't even track a flashlight with his eyes," she said.

Video segments shot months later — after dozens of daily treatments and intensive physical therapy — show the man walking, talking and playfully teasing his doctor.

"He was in a horrible car accident and had been comatose, but he went from a nearly vegetative state to having so much sparkle and life. I thought, 'If this treatment can do that for someone so severely damaged, what could it do for me?' "

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy, commonly used to promote the healing of wounds from surgery, injury, disease or infection, is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of brain injuries or neurological disorders, but Harch and other doctors across the country report using the therapy for such conditions with great success. Because insurance companies typically will not pay for such "off label" uses, the treatment is cost-prohibitive and not widely available.

To inquire about the therapy, Gottlieb called Harch Hyperbaric Research Foundation in New Orleans. Harch formed the nonprofit group to study and document the effects of hyperbaric medicine in the treatment of stroke patients and those with brain trauma, cerebral palsy, autism, carbon monoxide poisoning and other neurological conditions.

Staff members at the research center noted Gottlieb's high level of post-stroke function, and when they learned of her background in marketing, economics and nonprofit management, they started asking the questions. The kicker: They had a full-time position to fill at the research foundation. Would she be interested?

She wouldn't draw a salary, but in exchange for coordinating patient travel, accommodations and in-kind donations for research programs, she would receive the regenerative therapy for free. Gottlieb jumped at the out-of-the-blue opportunity and packed her bags the week before Christmas to prepare for a move to New Orleans.

In December at her mother's apartment in Brandon, Gottlieb gushed with hope for her own recovery and for participants in the foundation's latest study — a clinical trial to document the effectiveness of hyperbaric oxygen therapy on soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with brain trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder.

"I'm going to be like their house mom," she said. "I know what it's like to have a traumatic brain injury. I know how terrifying and demoralizing it is when you can't add or subtract and you keep falling down and bumping into things and forgetting things. I thought I was going crazy, and I was so frightened. My heart is with these people."

Physician Allan Spiegel of Palm Harbor treats patients with traumatic brain injury, stroke and other conditions at National Hyperbaric-Tampa Bay, one of four facilities in the nation recruited to participate in Harch's clinical trial.

Spiegel said almost every patient he has treated during the past 11 years has seen positive results. Some, he said, experience dramatic recoveries nothing short of miraculous.

"With brain injuries and neurological disorders, nothing works all the time," Spiegel said. "But nothing works as well as hyperbaric oxygen therapy."

Last year, Spiegel formed a charitable foundation, Healing Heroes Network, to help fund the treatment for brain-injured soldiers. He said doctors and patients and their families across the country are eager to see the clinical trails completed and brought before the FDA for approval.

Spiegel lobbied with Harch and other hyperbarics proponents for a bill introduced by Congress in November that would require the Department of Defense to pay for or reimburse wounded soldiers for any procedure proven and available to treat their injuries. The group hopes the results of the clinical trial under way will be more than enough to push the bill through so soldiers can start receiving treatments.

Gottlieb can barely believe she will receive the therapy and have a hand in a study with the potential to benefit military men and women with traumatic brain injuries.

"This treatment basically regrows damaged brain tissue," she said. "We can give so many of these severely wounded veterans their lives back."

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