November 30, 2007
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16780118
Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor of French Elle, was 43 years old when he suffered a massive stroke in 1995.
The stroke left him paralyzed — except for his left eye. That tiny portal became Bauby’s means of communication.
The therapist at his hospital came up with a system. She would read through letters of the alphabet, and Bauby would blink when she came to the letter he wanted — and thus spell out his message.
Bit by excruciating bit — by blinking — Bauby dictated a book about his experience, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
“Basically, there’s more than 50 different kinds of blinks.
And until you start making a movie about a guy blinking, you don’t really notice that. You just think the word ‘blink’ means blink.”
“I think you need to go into his world in order to get out of his world.
And he said the only way he could escape his diving bell was through his imagination and his memory.
Those were the only two things that weren’t paralyzed, besides his left eye,” Schnabel says.
“I figured if I told this story, I could actually help somebody else, and I could help myself, because I think it’s extremely optimistic.
I think it’s life-affirming,” Schnabel says.
locked-in syndrome
Your Hand In Mine
by Explosions In The Sky
related news:
Paralyzed UK man dies after losing assisted-suicide case
CNN. August 23, 2012
http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/22/world/europe/uk-locked-in-death
NBC Nightly News
2015
related:
https://franzcalvo.wordpress.com/2015/02/08/i-began-to-wake-up
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