4/7/08

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly


Last night I went to see the movie The Diving Bell & The Butterfly. I didn't know what was the movie about until half an hour before the movie. If I had known, I probably wouldn't have gone to see it. It was a good movie but it reminded me so much of my accident, that it was a little depressing.

The movie is based on a true story of a guy who had a stroke and couldn't move anything except his left eye. His speech therapist gave him a method to communicate. She gave him a chart with the alphabet. She recites the letters and when she gets to the letter that spells what he wants to say, he blinks once. He ended up writing a book using this method with a very patient transcriptionist.

When I had the accident, I couldn't move anything and I couldn't talk because I had a tracheotomy. So in the hospital they used the same method with me. This only lasted a few weeks (not sure, I'm a little fuzzy on the time). After a few weeks they took out the tracheotomy and I could speak again. While I was going thru that I remember thinking "How can I say what I want to say in as few words as possible?" I can't imagine writing a whole book.

Seeing the movie depressed me a little but it also made me very thankful that my condition is not as bad as it could have been.

Here's a trailer
http://www.imdb.com/video/trailer/me60707328/

2 comments:

Mary Thorsby said...

We're thankful too, Aynex!

Anonymous said...

I loved "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly", but the movie I'd rather see is "My Stroke of Insight", which is the amazing bestselling book by Dr Jill Bolte Taylor. It is an incredible story and there's a happy ending. She was a 37 year old Harvard brain scientist who had a stroke in the left half of her brain. The story is about how she fully recovered, what she learned and experienced, and it teaches a lot about how to live a better life. Her TEDTalk at TED dot com is fantastic too. It's been spread online millions of times and you'll see why!