Helen Zaltzman 

Locked In review – one man’s punchily written recovery story

Style matches subject matter in Richard Marsh's account of how he conquered locked-in syndrome, writes Helen Zaltzman
  
  

locked-in-review-richard-marsh
Richard Marsh: saved from death by the sudden recovery of his ability to blink. Photograph: Robert Gumpert/nb Pictures Photograph: Robert Gumpert/nb Pictures

On Tuesday 19 May 2009, 55-year-old former policeman Richard Marsh felt a bit odd. The following day, a massive stroke sent him to intensive care where, unable to move a muscle but fully conscious, he was able to hear the doctors diagnose him as braindead and advise his wife to turn off the life support. In the nick of time, his ability to blink returned, demonstrating that Marsh was not comatose but suffering from locked-in syndrome.

The condition has previously been documented in The Diving-Bell & the Butterfly, the memoir painstakingly dictated through eyelid-twitching by French journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby, who died shortly after. There's a The subtitle of Marsh's book – One Man's Miraculous Escape from the Terrifying Confines of Locked-In Syndrome – already tips you off that there'll be a happier ending, and that Marsh is must be one of the 10% of sufferers of the condition who survive for more than four months. But while his recovery is miraculous, monumental effort is required to restore his ability to eat, speak and move.

Locked In is ghostwritten like a fairly routine cop thriller, punchy with single sentence paragraphs; but the style comes to suit Marsh's experience, trapped in his own body and mired in frustration, his perception for months limited to what was in his direct line of sight in his hospital room.

 

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