The Diving Bell And The Butterfly

The client is more than the patient I am caring for on the unit. It extends to the family, caregivers, and friends. When working with complex patients, I remind families they are the “expert” on the patient. They feel valued knowing their information and input is

Stroke is a leading health care problem worldwide; ‘living with stroke’ is a real challenge both stroke survivors and their caregivers face.

In the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the ability to adapt or accept one’s disability is the main theme of this book. Bauby teaches his readers how he overcame his greatest adversity, locked in syndrome. Bauby (1997) described this condition as being, “Paralyzed from head to toe, the patient, his mind intact, is imprisoned inside his own body, unable to speak or move” (p.3). It could have been very easy for Bauby to give up or see no point in living, take pity on the things that he was no longer capable of doing. Instead, he chose to learn to live with his new onset condition of locked in syndrome, focusing on what he could do. He relates this syndrome to a diving bell and a butterfly. The diving bell being the weight or the inability

As stated previously, Story Theory is a very simple practice theory. As shown the main concepts are combined to give the theory its’ meaning and efficacy. There are two main relationships expressed. The primary one is that between the nurse and the patient and family. This relationship is created as a consequence of a health challenge, and involves developing the patient’s story. The patient as the story teller is respected and the nurse’s role is to support and

First of all, I recognized that I was dealing with humans, and not just dealing with a disease process and application of the nursing process in the aspect of restoring patient health. I was dealing with emotions, and families, and cultural beliefs that influenced individual’s aspects of care. I started to see that health did not just incorporate healing the disease, but also recognized the importance of making sure patient’s felt that their

People with disabilities are not completely gone. They are still there and have a mind of their own. They feel emotions and sometimes have a more complex mind than others. Two authors help enlighten this idea that disabled people are much more than helpless bodies. Both Christy Brown and Jean-Dominique Bauby perfectly illustrate their lives and what it is like to be disabled, and they prove by their stories that they think and feel, and can even develop enough to share what they feel with the world. My Left Foot is about the journey of a boy suffering from cerebral palsy. His entire life he was labeled as a loss cause by doctor after doctor, but his mom never gave up hope. Slowly, he started showing signs of development by random movements responding to certain situations. In the end he ends up being able to communicate with his left foot. The next story, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, is about an individual who suffered a stroke at the age of 43, leaving him paralyzed, only able to blink his left eye as communication. He develops his own alphabet inspired by the French language in order to exchange conversations with others. His thoughts in the story jump from the present, him currently disabled, and the past, when he was not. Both memoirs, with very different stories, show the lives of two individuals that are not like others. One who had their disability since birth, and the other who obtained one after a tragic event. In My Left Foot by Christy Brown and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby, both authors use characterization to show readers the struggles of disabled people and help them understand that just because they can’t use motions such as hand gestures to express how they feel, doesn’t mean that they don’t think and feel.

I have a sad story about a patient I took care of when I first started working in oncology.

Patient stories bring healthcare experiences to life highlighting if they are positive or negative. They encourage the NHS to focus on the person and view then as a statistic. Stories can be told from the point of view of the patient therefore the focus is solely on the individual and not the condition. Stories are made up of a complex network of events from admission to discharge.Stories can be sourced from patients and families, members of staff and care workers. Everyone’s experience of the healthcare experience is valuable. Patient experiences are used to improve healthcare, however and individual story is not a representation of all patient experiences. Stories help us to see things from the point of view of a

The therapist helps the client identify particular concerns and how this could possibly help or hinder their recovery. Being able to discuss these concerns and receiving a different perspective can help the client view them in a bigger context. Thus allowing them to begin to stabilize and normalize their environment. This new acceptance will then allow the client to see all the different possibilities for a better life.

The client's objective in seeking help including any reservations they may have. Is it a long-term problem or a new problem.

One of my recovery goals is to write my book about 50 years of medical disasters and yet hold on to one’s enthusiasm for life.” In his time of need he asked for help from the only people he has left to call ‘family’, people he’s helped and loved immensely for over a decade. They don’t offer help even though they have the means to do so. When asked for some compassion and assistance, they say they will pray for him and not much else. “This crisis has shown me that once I can heal up and work again, some big changes are going to be necessary.”

During this process I have had the opportunity to read the case notes of various clients that I have worked with. I often times learned things about the client that I would not have known had I not read the notes or the assessments. Reading these notes allows me the ability to understand why the clients may have troubles with certain areas such as boundaries, communication or even money management. These case notes allow me to see areas of their treatment plan that they have worked on and understand any progress or obstacles that they may have

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a movie presenting the life of Jean-Dominique Bauby, a gentleman who suffered a severe stroke, which caused him to endure a peculiar disorder called locked-in-syndrome. The symptoms of this render him paralyzed from head to toe, without the ability to speak. In the opening of the movie, Bauby is unaware that he cannot speak because he shows confusion when no one is responding to what he is saying. The only consistent, physical movement that he has is the ability to move his one functioning eye, and blink his eyelid open and shut. In order for Bauby to communicate, the speech therapist has instructed him to blink once to indicate “yes” and twice to indicate “no”. Locked-in-syndrome is a neurological disorder that leaves the patient aware or their surroundings, memories, and language, but due to the loss of voluntary movements, speech is lost (Adaes, 2015). Bauby displays all of these symptoms, explaining that he only thing that keeps him sane is his ability to escape through his imagination and memories

Nurses, on the other hand, seek to understand the experiences of their patients to provide care that is effective for meeting the patient’s needs. “For health providers…the need to understand the integrity of a patient's life course may be central to understanding or diagnosing the illness itself or in seeking amelioration by treatment plans of ambitious or conservative design” (“Medicine, Nursing…”). Narrative psychology can provide a foundation for nurses to effectively acquire this understanding and provide patient care on a more intimate level.

I'm amazed by the clear majority of “successful” people who overcame adversity and hardship. How do we react to ours? Do we crumble like cookies under the thought of a challenge and avoid them.. or do we conquer challenges and own them? Well, I say, it's up to us. All this [stress] plays into a huge feedback loop that can determine health, happiness, and ultimately our "success". For better or for worse. Why did patients in our readings have such different personal narratives of illness from what seemed to be very similar and even in the same biomedical causes of illnesses? These questions highlight the view that there is a deeper transcending non-biomedical cause of illness, which then, effects outcomes of treatment and healing. I believe an attitude of resilience fostered through experience, plays a huge role in how people react to their illness which then affects how one responds to treatment/therapy. How is it that some people in life have suffered so much and at the end of the day, sometimes after years. not only remain intact mentally, but thrive in the world and carry on with their lives, despite their condition(s) and exposure to trauma. Against all the odds. Through personal experience and evidence presented in the readings. I will persuade you to understand why I feel humans may respond so differently; to treatment and the processes of healing. I don’t expect you to agree with everything I say, you are entitled to that. I only expect that you acknowledge that the