Former referee Lane recovering slowly

Monday, March 31, 2003 | 9:11 a.m.

It has been a year since Mills Lane suffered a stroke that left the former Washoe County district judge and internationally known boxing referee with limited speech and unable to use his right arm.

His recovery has been slow, but Lane began hyperbaric oxygen therapy this year, which his wife said was showing great success.

"We know it works," Kaye Lane told the Reno Gazette-Journal in a telephone interview from the couple's New York City apartment.

"The sentences were coming out. Sometimes he would surprise me with the things he could say."

Then his progress hit a plateau, she said.

"He got very fatigued, and it was hard to do a lot of therapy and make any progress," Kaye Lane said.

But she said the therapy could resume as his condition improves.

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy involves placing the patient in an almost pure oxygen environment at pressure greater than sea level.

It is believed to enhance the body's natural healing process and is sometimes used to treat people who have suffered strokes, head injuries, nonhealing diabetic wounds, spinal cord injuries and bone fractures.