Tag: Locked in Syndrome

The Shoe and The Other Foot

Would you get a load of this? This is my 300th post. And as it just so happens I got something pretty interesting — well I think — to write about, too. Huh.

Yesterday a friend forwarded me a link to a BBC article about a “Locked-in” man’s right-to-die. She was interested in my take. Seeing how I was once in nearly the exact same predicament — although Tony Nicklinson’s “syndrome” sounds like the Cadillac model of the “syndrome” I experienced, he can eat and nod, I couldn’t. However the more I contemplated the story, and the complex issues seemingly at hand, the more convoluted my stance became.

I’ve written about this issue previously, at the beginning of February of last year Eluana Englara, an Italian woman in the throws of a “17 year coma, as a result of a car accident,” and was having her “fate,” if you will, decided by people other than herself. Simply because she wasn’t in the position to make her wishes known. I’ll say it again, this was, and always will be, a very complicated issue. One for which there is no easy answer…

Continue reading The Shoe and The Other Foot

Just Read The Damn Book

Book JacketNearing the end of July I saw the movie The Diving Bell And The Butterfly and subsequently wrote a piece entitled Let Your Imagination Set You Free. Since then I’ve had an opportunity to read the book, by the same name, which set this all adrift. Not to mention my interest in what he so valiantly accomplished. The authoring of some memoirs.

I seem to recall hearing a few professionals, at a rehabilitation hospital I was admitted to in March of ’97, recommend my family read a book written by a bloke who suffered from an affliction painstakingly “similar” to mine. The “affliction” being, as I’ve mentioned previously, “Locked-in Syndrome.” And “the bloke” being, I assume, Jean-Dominique Bauby. As it turns out Bauby’s book was originally published the very same week I finally began my climb out of my body. Weird.

Anyway this is a quick read. One I suggest people read in “collaboration” with the movie. The nature of both medium’s provide an important context into each other. I guess having “lived it” provides me a perspective I felt the book didn’t provide. No cut on him. And seeing it on screen I was better able to grasp what he experienced. The movie allows a person to witness difficulties he faced, the most prevalent being writing. Whereas the book, just as relevantly, tells that same person what he thought and felt.

It’s really a great story. Take my word for it…

Continue reading Just Read The Damn Book

Irresponsibility

I realize this is a lot late, and now that John McCain’s campaign has shifted to something else he hasn’t a leg to stand on, but yesterday a buddy pointed me to an article posted on RollingStone.com. It was about the McCain campaign while on the road during the primary season. I couldn’t read it all. Frankly I found it quite uninteresting.

However towards the beginning of the piece, they dedicated a fair chunk of it to his time as a POW. I don’t know about you, but I’m a lot bored with people telling, and him allowing them to tell, those “tales.” I always have been. In fact I find the whole “hero” label and him being labeled one fairly problematic.

Everybody faces challenges every day. Some not as dire. Yet some worse. Not everyone lives to be recognized for their struggles. Or hopes to benefit from them quite as much as him being elected President might prove. I, for one, was a little more impressed with him when he “didn’t like to talk about it.” Even knowing full well that his reluctance to discuss his time in Vietnam was just a “warm-up” for things that followed. Call me a cynic, but we all should have known… Continue reading Irresponsibility

The Shivers

Ever since my accident my “wiring” has been altered from how it was prior to my bump. When use the term “wiring” I’m merely referring to the manner in which my brain communicates with my body. And even more specifically I’m speaking from a physical perspective. In terms of my ability to operate the various parts of my body.

And, yes, I did, for some time, suffer from locked-in syndrome, which insured I couldn’t move voluntarily. But that didn’t mean I was a soft pile of skin and bone. Far from it. I did my fair share of moving, during that time, in the form of spasms. Often it was a reaction to something as non-threatening as a persons touch. It freaked out more than one massage therapist. That’s right, two.

I was a mess. And it hurt. Bad…

Continue reading The Shivers