Re: On the passing of Ken Locklear.

[Guest guest]

Thanks for letting us know!

He will be missed!

My thoughts, prayers and most sincere condolences go out to his family!

Marguerite...

In a message dated 1/13/2011 1:11:15 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,

davidfreels09@... writes:

I received an email about two hours ago from Roque Wicker's HBOTech blog

that Ken Locklear died yesterday, January 11, 2011.

Ken was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer just over 3 years ago. The

docs told him to go home and get his affairs in order because he only had a

few brief weeks to live. Instead, he looked for somebody to give him chemo.

Next, he rolled a hyperbaric chamber into his living room. A few months

later he was pronounced cancer-free, and the oncologists went back to see if

their diagnosis was correct.

I found out about all of this afterwards. Ken didn't want to tell anybody

what he was going through and kept it to himself. He was like that.

A few years before that he founded the International Hyperbaric Medical

Association (IHMA) with Harch and together they went before CMS and got

diabetic foot wounds added as the first new indication in a couple of

decades. Sometime later he turned over the reins of the IHMA after he lost

about

$75,000, something he just didn't want to tell anybody about.

In the years since, a lot of the IHMA are still blamed on Ken Locklear.

During that same period, he also lost money publishing *Hyperbaric

Medicine Today* (HMT) magazine, but that magazine documented the momentous

change

bulldozing its way through Hyperbaric Medicine, driven by parents of

brain-injured children and caregivers of brain-injured loved ones.

Ken occasionally became embroiled in many of the same arguments that

repeatedly pop up on the Internet groups. Finally, he stepped away from them

and

often encouraged me to do the same. Ken stepped back into a time and place

where the spotlight was no longer on him and he could get some more work

done.

He started publishing another magazine about a year or so ago: " Wound Care

& Hyperbaric Medicine Magazine. " See _http://hyperbaricmagazine.com._

(http://hyperbaricmagazine.com./) He also started the Oxygen Research

Foundation (_http://oxygenresearchfoundation.org/_

(http://oxygenresearchfoundation.org/) ) with a special emphasis on HBOT for

cancer patients. Most recently,

Ken purchased Best Publishing, which publishes the most texts in

Hyperbaric Medicine.

Ken took a lot of chances. He stepped out. He was courageous. And he was

incredibly loyal and forever honest.

I first met Ken on the old hbo-list almost 12 years ago. Then one day he

called and told me he was going to publish a magazine on Hyperbaric

Medicine and asked if I'd contribute. I was flattered. Then he asked me if I

had

any story ideas. It's funny, but it would be another six months to a year

before I'd actually meet him in person, but I'd read enough of his listserv

posts to know where his heart was. And that's when I told him about a

telephone conversation I'd had a week or two before with a former UHMS

president

who admitted the benefits of HBOT for stroke, admitted that people could

make full recoveries and went on to say that he'd personally created the

Medicare list of banned uses of HBOT.

Ken literally dropped the phone. He knew who I was talking with and later

spoke to him and he told Ken the same thing he told me. About three or four

years later the story was finally published, and it contributed to the

call for hearings before the US Congress on Hyperbaric Medicine for

brain-injuries. See _http://www.oxyhealth.com/images/noncovered.pdf_

(http://www.oxyhealth.com/images/noncovered.pdf)

An obituary for Ken prepared by Roque Wicker can be found at

_http://hbotechblog.com/2011/01/12/in-loving-memory-of-kenneth-locklear/_

(http://hbotechblog.com/2011/01/12/in-loving-memory-of-kenneth-locklear/)

Freels

2948 Windfield Circle

Tucker, GA 30084-6714

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