Non-Blog

Locked-in syndrome jumps from the pages of a horror story.  But, it happens to people.  Suffering a stroke, or another form of traumatic brain injury, can cause a type of total paralysis that results in either highly restricted movement, or no bodily movement at all.  The brain, however, remains functional (sometimes as functional as it previously was), and the person’s spirit, mind, and feelings keep going. The patient is literally locked in his or her own body.  Just thinking about being locked in evokes feelings of anxiety and terror in me.

            One man remained locked-in his body for twenty-three years before doctors discovered that his brain functioned. Another man, a journalist named Jean-Dominique Bauby, devised a sophisticated system of blinking that eventually allowed him to communicate his profound and sophisticated thoughts. During his “comatose” state, this journalist wrote a book and responded to interview questions.  Right before his death, he had arranged to write a second book.

            In his book he conveyed feelings such as, “Is there a key outside that can unlock my bubble?  . . . A currency valuable enough to buy my freedom? I have to look elsewhere. I am going there.”

            In the case of being locked-in, a person loses all capacity to make decisions, touch a loved one’s face, ask for a glass of water, or sometimes even open one’s eyes.  Rather than only create a dialogue about the right to live or die under such circumstances—as in a life experienced in an extended vegetative state—the discovery of what a person with locked-in syndrome thinks, feels, and notices elucidates the unique ability to suffer the worst that life can hand an individual . . . .

  And, [at the end of the day] the only thing humans have is their mind.  Even living under the most savage and tyrannical rule, a despot cannot take control of an individual’s mind and an individual’s reaction to the hardships in life.  An inner optimism, the need to pursue meaningful experiences, the desire to create (and the process of creating), all provide humans with the sanguinity to stand tall during times of crisis.  Even the ravages of war will not push down people who embrace the ideal that their mind can be directed and expanded only be them.  Being locked in one’s body . . . provides individuals with an opportunity to realize where true freedom lies.  As Viktor Frankl says, in Man’s Search for Meaning,  “When a mind finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task.  He will have to acknowledge that he is alone in the universe.  No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place.”

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