with the blink of an eye

When Jean-Do Bauby set out in a chauffeured car to take his son to a play one night in Dec 1995, he could not have known that his trip would end at Berck-sur-Mer, a rehabilitation hospital. The turn his life took that night was one that no one would ever anticipate. Who has even heard of “locked-in-syndrome”?

But fortunately for us, he produced a memoir of his experiences. There's probably no way to really understand what this new life was like, but it's fascinating and inspiring to read about.

Jean-Dominique Bauby was the editor of the French fashion magazine Elle and was only 43 yrs old when he suffered the stroke that left him completely paralyzed. Well, not completely, he had the use of one eye. It was by blinking his eye that he was able to communicate and that is how he dictated his book.

He called the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, representing his physical body trapped in a diving bell and his mind, free to wander about, as a butterfly.

The story is heartbreaking, but it’s told with optimism and humor and ends up being uplifting rather than depressing.

The book was made into a very beautiful movie that does an amazing job of showing the world from Jean-Do's limited point of view. Unfortunately some of the movie is fictionalized, which is too bad because the true story is powerful enough and needs no embellishment.

Read the book. See the movie. It will open your eyes to see the world in a new way.