Article: Sharon - The Value and Meaning of Life

Sharon

If you could only blink your eyes would you think your life was still worth living?  Dominique Bauby talked about exactly that dilemma in his book about brain stem stroke.

On December 9, 1995, Dominique Bauby, the editor-in-chief of French Elle magazine, suffered a stroke and lapsed into a coma. He awoke 20 days later, mentally aware of his surroundings, but physically paralyzed with locked-in syndrome.  He was left with some movement in his head and one eye.  Similarly, an Alberta mother of two, Glenda Hickey had a stroke that left her locked in. She surprised family and friends when she had a baby.

What made Dominque Bauby and Glenda Hickey want to live and love despite significant disability?  Dominque Bauby was able to tell his story. With the help of assistants, Dominique Bauby wrote a book about his experience by blinking his left eyelid, which took ten months (four hours a day).

In the film of the book, a nurse wraps Bauby in a blanket and takes him in his wheelchair to look out towards sea.  It is a turning point — the beauty, the wind, and the waves pushes him to look inward, to his memory and his inner self, the only part of his life that he can still control.

This movie recreation is probably not unlike the questions that psychiatrist Victor Frankl asked himself when he was a prisoner in a World War II extermination camp: What is the meaning of your life when you are stripped of your position and all of your possessions?  How do you make meaning of your life when you are not in control?   While you cannot compare living with impairment to the degradation that happened in those World War II prison camps, at times, if people have severe disability, health professionals and the public will question how a person with such disabilities values their life.

Victor Frankl and Dominque Bauby decided that the meaning of life is found in every moment of living; that life never ceases to have meaning, even in suffering and death. From his experience as a prisoner in the Auschwitz death camp,  Frankl makes it very clear that that however terrible the actual conditions of life, the person still has a psychological choice.  Frankl decided that even in severe suffering, “the prisoner’ who is able to move into his spiritual inner self and can rely on hope can still finding meaning in life.

How have you found meaning in your life after stroke?

More information:

• Read about the woman who stayed with Bauby after his stroke, "The Real Love Story Behind the Diving Bell and the Butterfly", 
• You can see the movie about Dominique Bauby’s life,  The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007),
• You can read the book "Diving-Bell And The Butterfly" by Jean-Dominique Bauby (Apr 22 2004),
• Glenda Hickey’s story: Trapped in Your Own Body.  Glenda has passed away, but I am sure the legacy of courage, humor, and hope that she leaves her to children and family will continue to inspire them, see "A Mother Who Loved Without Words",
• Victor Frankl’s – Man’s Search for Meaning.