There are portable hyperbaric chambers for sale in Melbourne? Good.
Hyperbaric chambers that can fit in your pocket and inflate at the touch of a button? Even better! Although I don’t think we’re quite there yet.
But just imagine a bright and shining future in which no one ever has to have any breathing problems, and the way to do it is even more convenient than an inhaler. Also, just generally sleeker and more stylish.
I have nothing against inhalers, but there’s a stigma against them that the person using them doesn’t have peak cardiovascular fitness. That’s unfair, to be sure, but the stereotype remains regardless. Now imagine if someone has a bit of breathing trouble, and they pull a small cylinder out of their pocket. A press of a button and in seconds, a fully-inflated portable hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber stands before them. They ask their comrades to wait just a moment before flashing a smile and stepping inside the chamber, and everyone around just thinks how cool they are, with their own private healthy space right there in their pockets. So cool. So slick. So convenient.
That’s the dream, anyway. Suppose I’m just looking at my own oxygen chamber, and the big glass ones they have in the hospital, and wishing they didn’t take up quite so much space. I like the portable ones a lot better, but still, they could always be MORE portable. Everything can be more portable. I bet at some stage people looked at the boom box and they thought that was as small and portable as it was ever going to get, and science was never going to top itself in terms of this feat of miniaturisation. And science sure showed them!
Maybe one day, people will be carrying their hyperbaric chambers. Melbourne will be full of people taking naps in the sun inside their chambers. I do hope to see the day when I’m walking through the streets of Melbourne and I see people with pocket hyperbaric chambers. They’ll almost be a fashion statement. Never leave home without them.
-Dr Muller