In December 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor-in-chief of French Elle magazine, suffered a massive stroke that left him with a condition known as locked-in syndrome — fully conscious and mentally intact, but almost completely paralyzed, unable to move or speak, with only the ability to blink his left eyelid remaining under his control.
Rather than accepting this as the end of any meaningful work, Bauby decided to write a book about his experience using the only tool left to him: blinking. A speech therapist developed a system in which someone would recite the French alphabet, letter by letter, and Bauby would blink once when they reached the letter he wanted, spelling out entire sentences one laborious blink at a time.
Composing each sentence mentally in advance and memorizing it before dictating it letter by letter, the process was extraordinarily slow, reportedly requiring roughly two hundred thousand total blinks to complete the manuscript over the following months, an effort of concentration and patience almost impossible to fully convey to someone who has never attempted anything similar.
The resulting book, 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,' was published in March 1997 and became an international bestseller, praised for its clarity and even its unexpected humor about his condition. Bauby died just two days after its publication, having completed, against what seemed like impossible odds, the exact work he had set out to finish.