Summary: "Drooling on Cashmere"

 In “Drooling in Cashmere” Jean-Dominique Bauby recounts how he still strives to maintain his personal identity despite being completely dependent on others because of a rare disease called “locked-in syndrome,” which decimates the nervous system while leaving psychological capabilities intact.   

            Bauby begins his essay by describing how when he first acquired the syndrome he felt confident that it was only a temporary state. However, he soon learns “the frightening truth,” that he “had graduated from being a patient whose prognosis was uncertain to an official quadriplegic.”

            After announcing his affliction, Bauby gives a more in depth picture of what constitutes” locked-in syndrome.” He describes it as rare as winning the lottery and caused by a nervous system that suddenly stops functioning, with any sort of recovery happens at a snails pace.

            Bauby uses the description of the disease as a segway to describe his own current condition (eating through a gastric tube, breathing through a respirator and unable to speak) and his hopes of someday being able to be strong enough to exist without life support.

            Despite having little control over his faculties, Bauby reveals that he still has the ability muster enough of a half smile to convey his emotions, which are often triggered by every day events that remind him of his life before the syndrome. His emotions often conflict, with the same event bringing happiness at one moment and lamentation seconds later. For example, Bauby describes how “the delectable moment where [he sinks] into the tub” as being followed by the “nostalgia for the…joy of [his] previous life.”  

            Bauby ends his essay by saying that despite the difficulty of his life and his dependence on others, he still insists on wearing his own old clothing instead of submitting to the hospital attire. Although the clothes are symbols of an old life that is sometimes painful to think about, Bauby sees them as representing his own individuality as well as projecting to others that, despite being dependent in nearly all ways, his personality is still his own

            This text appears in Bauby’s memoir “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”, a short book where Bauby describes his life before “locked in-syndrome” and how the condition changed his life and outlook. Since Bauby could not speak, let alone type or write, he spelled out each word of the book by blinking his left eye to convey letters.  The time and energy it took for Bauby to communicate his book shows how deeply he felt about telling his story to the world.  Before his condition struck he was the editor at Elle magazine, a position of notoriety that ensured that an apt audience wanting to hear his story.

                                                                      Works Cited

Bauby, Jeane-Dominique. "Drooling on Cashmere." Lapham's Quarterly Fall 2009:  

           130-31

Sowers, Leslie. "`Locked-in' Quadriplegic Shares Life." Houston Chronicle 20 July 1997,               Sunday ed.,Zest sec.: 18. Houston Chronicle Archives. Hearst Corporation. Web.               

   6 Sept. 2011. <http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=1997_ 1425686>.