I can hear music again...

How hyperbaric oxygen therapy helped restore Ashley Frantz's hearing

When Lake Charles small business owner Ashley Frantz woke up one morning in June 2025 with an earache and muffled sound in her right ear, she wasn’t concerned.

“I’ve had ear infections before, so my symptoms weren’t alarming to me at all,” Frantz says.

As a busy mom and the owner of Lulu’s Specialty Snocones and More, she didn’t have time to slow down, so she went to urgent care, expecting a quick visit and some antibiotics. Instead, she was sent straight to an ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialist who feared the infection was already affecting her eardrum. A hearing test confirmed the worst.

“The technician went through the test on my left ear, and I heard every sound it played,” Frantz recalls. “Then she told me we were starting with the right ear.”

Frantz waited for the familiar tones—and heard only silence.

“I thought we hadn’t started,” she says. “But I could tell by her face that we had. I broke down in the booth.”

The exam revealed a middle ear infection that can cause permanent hearing loss if not treated quickly. Her ENT offered hope but said it would require an aggressive plan:

steroid injections and hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT)—two-hour sessions, five days a week, for four weeks—to give her the best chance at restoring her hearing.

Facing the first session
While Frantz prepared for therapy and hoped for healing, the world kept moving around her. It was the middle of summer, the busiest time of the year for Lulu’s, and with that came its own set of new challenges.

“My employees were very understanding, but the noise level of a snow cone shop isn’t helpful for a person with partial hearing loss, so I needed a solution,” Frantz says.

Frantz walked into her first HBOT session hopeful but anxious.

“I’m claustrophobic, so the moment I saw where I’d be for two hours, I was scared,” she says.

Only the encouragement of her nurse, Moria, got her through it.

“Even when I started to feel panicked inside the chamber, she talked me through those moments, and I made it,” Frantz explains.

With continued support from the HBOT team and Donald Higgins, MD, family medicine physician and wound care specialist, Frantz pushed through treatment day after day. Slowly, her body began to respond.

Faint music starts to play
One night, after about eight treatments, Frantz noticed something different. Listening to music with her daughter, she suddenly realized she could hear the song through her right earphone.

“I could hear it,” she says. “It was muffled, but there was sound.”

Skeptical, she asked her daughter, “Play another one.”

Again, she heard faint music. For the first time since the ear infection, silence wasn’t the only thing in that ear.

Hearing what matters
Seven months later, Frantz has regained 100% of her hearing.

And with that healing came a new sense of gratitude for everyday moments she once overlooked. The first was conversation—especially with her teenage daughter in the car. Before treatment, hearing her from the passenger seat was nearly impossible.

The second was simple but meaningful: the quiet morning sound of birds outside her window. After months of silence on one side, those small noises now feel like gifts.

“Before this, I would have never thought something like this was available in Lake Charles,” Frantz says. “People probably think they’d have to drive to a larger city for this kind of therapy, but they don’t.”

Reflecting on her journey, she says, “Everyone I encountered there was so kind, and I felt so safe. It was a major investment of time that I really didn’t have, but I made it work, and being able to hear again is worth every minute.”