re: A question on altitude coping
I have no experience in this other than specifying atmospheric conditions in spacecraft, and all my designs have featured a full standard Earth atmosphere (nitrogen and all) while the Shuttle was just a gleam in NASA's eye.
To the best of my knowledge, time is the best medicine.
This may be useful. The drugs listed here, and others I have heard of, sound too risky unless you seriously have to deal with some high-altitude emergency.