The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Jean Dominique Bauby 1997)

I saw the movie "the Diving Bell and the Butterfly" a while ago and thought it was fantastic. The book, a memoir, was originally written in French by a man, Jean Dominique Bauby, who suffered a massive stroke and was then diagnosed with "Locked In Syndrome," where the person is fully capable of thinking, but unable to move his or her body. To me, and based on how Bauby describes it, this condition sounds like utter hell, the only part of his body that Bauby can move is his left eyelid, which is his only means of communication. Amazingly, Bauby was able to write his book by a special method in which someone, a hired assistant, slowly repeated the alphabet to Bauby. He then blinked when she said the letter he wanted to write. So letter by letter, the entire book was dictated from Bauby's still functioning mind. Bauby's book is quite short, a little over a hundred pages, but that is understandable given the circumstances under which he wrote the book. He had to memorize every paragraph and do all of the editing in his head before he could rely it to his assistant. I do not think I could do this; I would forget what words I wanted to say and get frustrated by how long the process took. Bauby and his assistant spent hours upon hours repeating the same process over and over again. The fact that Bauby was even able to write this book is a grand accomplishment that I suspect few people would be able to do under the same circumstances.