Put your oxygen mask on first, before helping others.

In 2016, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. Much of my twenties became a cycle of flare-ups, hospital stays and medication. There were periods when things settled, but the possibility of getting ill again was always there.

Alongside the Crohn’s, I was dealing with fatigue, brain fog, skin allergies and intense itching. Over time, feeling unwell became so familiar that I struggled to remember what feeling well was actually like.

By 2022, another severe flare-up had put me back in hospital. I was exhausted. I remember wondering whether this was just how my life was going to be.

We decided to buy a chamber to use at home. It was a big decision, but having it there meant I could use it regularly, and over the following months it became part of my routine.

Gradually, I started noticing changes. My head felt clearer. My skin began to settle. The itching eased. One day, I looked down at my hands and realised the medicine-induced warts that had been there for years were gone.

These were personal changes I was experiencing, and I wanted to understand them. Joe and I kept reading, asking questions and learning everything we could about hyperbaric oxygen.

As I began to feel better, my life started opening up again. One day without pain became three, then a week, then an entire month. With that came more energy, more confidence and the space to think beyond the next flare-up. During that time, I made the personal decision to stop taking my medication and commit fully to hyperbaric oxygen.

It took another twelve months to find the right location. By then, we had spent a lot of time thinking about how Breathe should feel.

I knew how much my surroundings could affect the way I felt when I went somewhere for care. We wanted somewhere you could walk into and feel comfortable asking questions, taking your time and being yourself.

We thought about the plants, the art, the sounds, the scent of the room and the people you would meet. We wanted you to feel understood as a person, known properly and surrounded by things that made you want to stay. The theme that followed was labelled “anti-clinical”.

Space matters. Air matters. The way you’re greeted matters. All of it is the therapy.

In September 2024, we had 34 appointments. By January 2025, that had grown to 526.

34appointments · September 2024526appointments · January 2025

Behind those numbers were people coming back, bringing someone with them and telling others about their experience. Our early members helped shape Breathe. They asked questions, gave us feedback and spread the word.

Some of the people who joined us in that first year are still here. They have seen the changes, grown with us and become a huge part of what this place is.

We’ve been holding onto the side of the Breathe rocket ever since, taking the highs and lows as they come. Through all of it, we’ve kept coming back to the same question: how do we make this accessible to more people while giving each person the care and attention they came for?

As I write this in October 2026, I’m the healthiest, heaviest and strongest I have ever been. Since the summer of 2023, I’ve remained in remission from Crohn’s and haven’t experienced the symptoms that once shaped so much of my life.

That doesn’t mean looking after myself has become effortless. I hadn’t realised how hard it would be to keep prioritising my own health while helping other people with theirs.

There have been times when building Breathe has taken more out of me than I expected. Shortly after we lost Jimmy, I reached a point where I wasn’t sure I could keep going. That same day, a member’s husband wrote to me. His wife was living with stage four cancer, and he wanted us to know how grateful he was that Breathe existed and how much the care we’d shown her had meant to them both. Reading his words didn’t take away the grief or exhaustion, but it reminded me why we’d opened our doors in the first place.

“Put your oxygen mask on first, before helping others” is something I say often. It’s also something I still need to remind myself.