The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

I saw a movie recently called The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. It's about a French guy named Jean-Dominique Bauby who had a stroke at age 43 and became completely paralyzed, after which he was only able to communicate by blinking his left eye.

His speech therapist developed a system for communication which consisted of her repeating over and over a modified alphabet, which was ordered by the frequency of use of each letter. When she got to the right letter, he had to blink once. Then she would being again repeating the alphabet for the next letter.

After coming to terms with his situation, Bauby ended up dictating an entire book using that alphabet blinking system!

While the computer scientist in me was appalled that they didn't come up with a more efficient dictation system, I felt compelled to read his book. I figured that if this guy could have the incredible tenacity to crank out a complete book one letter at a time, that I had to at least check out what he had to say. So I ordered the book on Amazon.

It's an interesting read. Bauby was a journalist, actually the editor-in-chief of French Elle, so he's an eloquent and poetic writer. Reading it of course made me think about the human condition, the fragility of our day to day lives, and the need to savor the moments and appreciate the little things. But the most moving thing to me was just the fact that he wrote it at all, using that incredibly tedious system. Pretty amazing.

If you're wondering about the title, as I was, a Diving Bell is a "cable-suspended airtight chamber, open at the bottom, that is lowered underwater...to operate as a base or a means of transport for a small number of divers." Bauby describes his condition as being trapped in a giant invisible diving bell. And he uses butterflies as a metaphor for his ability to escape the diving bell through journeys of the imagination.