Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: locked-in syndrome

  • The Lazarus phenomenon: When the dead return to life

    Tom SeweNairobi, Kenya It is a few minutes after 2 AM. A middle-aged woman lays motionless on a table in a hospital emergency department with tubes protruding from multiple orifices. The relentless cardiac monitor screams its flat-line signal as the code-blue team pants, scrubs clinging to their sweaty chests after a phenomenal forty-five-minute cardiopulmonary resuscitation…

  • Locked-in syndrome: Inside the cocoon

    Anika KhanKarachi, Pakistan “…what will you carry back from this field trip into my endless solitude?”From The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby (1997) In December 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby suffered a massive stroke that made him a prisoner in his own body.1 Within the space of a few hours, his hectic, animated existence…