But improved resuscitation techniques have now prolonged and refined the agony. In the past it was known as a “massive stroke,” and you simply died. I was brutally introduced to this vital piece of anatomy when a cerebrovascular accident took my brain stem out of action. I’ve since learned that it is an essential component of our internal computer, the inseparable link between the brain and the spinal cord. Up until then, I had never even heard of the brain stem. No need to wonder very long where I am, or to recall that the life I once knew was snuffed out Friday, the eighth of December, last year. I linger over every item: photos of loved ones, my children’s drawings, posters, the little tin cyclist sent by a friend the day before the Pairs-Roubaix bike race, and the IV pole hanging over the bed where I have been confined these past six months, like a hermit crab dug into his rock. My heels hurt, my head weighs a ton, and something like a giant invisible diving bell holds my whole body prisoner. Through the frayed curtain at my window, a wan glow announces the break of day. Here are the first 15 pages to give you a taste. The book chronicles everyday events for a person with locked-in syndrome.īauby died of pneumonia two days after the book was published. He did this for four hours a day and it took about 10 months.
The book took about 200,000 blinks to write and an average word took approximately two minutes. A transcriber repeatedly recited a French language frequency-ordered alphabet (E, S, A, R, I, N, T, U, L, etc.), until Bauby blinked to choose the next letter. In his nearly immobile state, Jean-Dominique Bauby wrote a book by communicating by blinking his left eyelid. He awoke 20 days later, mentally aware of his surroundings but physically paralyzed with the exception of some movement in his head and eyes (one of which had to be sewn up due to an irrigation problem). On December 8, 1995, the editor-in-chief of Elle magazine, Jean-Dominique Bauby, suffered a stroke and lapsed into a coma.
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