Ascension : News From The Grotto - Thought For The Week
Submitted by The Islander (Shari Parkhill) 23.10.2008 (Article Archived on 06.11.2008)

This past week I watched a very good French movie “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”.

 It is about a man, Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor –in-chief of Elle Magazine.  On December 8, 1995, at the age of only forty-two, he suffered a massive cerebrovascular accident.  It left him in a coma for twenty days.  When he woke up, he was cognizant of every thing around him, but was totally unable to communicate or move.  He was suffering from a condition known as “locked-in syndrome”.  Much of the movie is shot from his perspective, through his eyes.  Especially at the beginning, it is very disconcerting to realize that although he is answering, it is only in his mind, no one can hear him.

As he comes to the full realization of his condition, he descends into despair and depression.  He is a grown man, one who had a busy profession, and now he depends on others for everything, including the simple and most personal aspects of his care.  He realizes that hope that he will recover is misplaced, and his life is now defined by the reality of living in a body that will not respond to his commands.

His therapist designs a method of communication which uses a frequency alphabet.  Letters are recited in the order they most frequently occur.  He blinks his left eye, the only one he can use, when she reaches the correct letter.  Then the process starts all over again.  One of the first things he communicates is that he wishes to die. 

Gradually his will to live comes back.  He realizes that he has two things left that nothing can change.  The first is his memory, those precious reminders of his past experiences that he can recall and cherish at will.  The second is his imagination.  With it, he can close his eyes and escape to anywhere, do anything, and live his life the way he wishes.

His memory and his imagination let him accept his reality.  He starts visiting with his children and friends, people he had shut out at first.  He had a book deal in the works before his life changed and he decides to pursue it and write his book, a memoir of his life both before and after his stroke, and about how he is coping with this life that has been thrust upon him.  His publisher sends him an assistant to whom he dictates his manuscript, one blink at a time. 

It took about two minutes per word to dictate his manuscript, about 200,000 blinks in all.   Writing small articles myself, I can imagine how frustrating it must have been to review and change.  Even something as small as this article goes through a number of rewrites before it is complete.  Can you imagine doing that at the agonizing pace of two minutes per word, just to make someone understand what you want to change? 

Jean-Dominque Bauby perservered, and found a way to accept the change in his life, and the massive limitations his condition placed upon him.  He decided to live instead of give in.  He decided to pass on his thoughts and his perspective.  Although he died of pneumonia in March, 1997, only ten days after his book was published, he saw the realization of a dream that most thought impossible for him.  He proved that for him, “Locked-in Syndrome” was a challenge to disprove.  And disprove it he did. 

Jean-Dominique Bauby should be a lesson to us.  He wasn’t a perfect man, he was angry at his fate, but he found a way to move on.  So whatever locks us in, makes us afraid, keeps us from following our dreams, must appear, in the light of his accomplishments, to be minor.  Sometimes we need a reminder of someone else’s tougher struggles to put our own challenges in perspective.  He is proof that anything is possible.

So this week, let us put aside a few moments to step back, be objective about the gifts in our lives, thank God for them, and be grateful that we are who and where we are in this life.