Monday, January 26, 2015

Trapped inside

Hearing how Gregor was trapped inside a bug while he was still completely conscious made me think of this news story I saw a while back. In it, a 12 year old boy fell into a coma, yet remained entirely conscious the whole time. He could see and hear everything around him (including Barney the kids show reruns for 12 years). This kind of torture of being a trapped conscious person while maintaining zero ability to actually do anything but think absolutely frightens me. Here's a link to the guy's story, it's actually pretty incredible on how he learned to tell time using the shadows and so forth. http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2015/01/man_trapped_in_coma_hates_barney.html

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I heard about this too! This is exactly what I was thinking about when we talked about how Gregor is somewhat similar to a person stuck in a vegetative state. Getting stuck in this state is probably one of my biggest fears, next to being buried alive. I guess they correlate: I'm scared of being alive and no one knowing I'm there. I'm scared of dying alone.

Unknown said...

I think this article on this 12 year old boy really does relate to Gregor's state and how desperate he must have felt. This state of being able to think the same way but not being able to act upon your thoughts reminds me of Ashlee Stokes, who visited our school when we were in middle school. She was paralyzed because she was in a car accident where she was hit by a drunk driver. She suffered severe brain damage and for that reason she largely lost her ability to speak even though she would attempt to while she could think perfectly clearly and observe her surroundings well. I feel like that inner desire to so desperately do what you could do before and trying to vocalize your thoughts when you really can't explains how Gregor felt. This inability must be one of the most biggest frustrations in the world, and its one that Gregor experienced and endured out of his selfless love for his family.