I leave bedtime until the last possible moment compatible with my nurse's need for sleep. Once I have been "prepared" for bed I am rolled into the bedroom in the wheelchair where I have spent the past eighteen hours. With some difficulty (despite my reduced height, mass, and bulk I am still a substantial dead weight for even a strong man to shift) I am maneuvered onto my cot. I am sat upright at an angle of some 110° and wedged into place with folded towels and pillows, my left leg in particular turned out ballet-like to compensate for its propensity to collapse inward. This process requires considerable concentration. If I allow a stray limb to be mis-placed, or fail to insist on having my midriff carefully aligned with legs and head, I shall suffer the agonies of the damned later in the night.
I am then covered, my hands placed outside the blanket to afford me the illusion of mobility but wrapped nonetheless since—like the rest of me—they now suffer from a permanent sensation of cold. I am offered a final scratch on any of a dozen itchy spots from hairline to toe; the Bi-Pap breathing device in my nose is adjusted to a necessarily uncomfortable level of tightness to ensure that it does not slip in the night; my glasses are removed...and there I lie: trussed, myopic, and motionless like a modern-day mummy, alone in my corporeal prison, accompanied for the rest of the night only by my thoughts.
I am reminded of that anti-war classic Johnny Got His Gun, about a young man severely wounded in battle, unable to communicate with the outside world save through nodding his head in Morse Code. Judt's reflections on his condition made me think of that, as well as the terror of the kind of isolation of which he writes. Deprived not just any ability to move, he is deprived of something far more basic - the ability to get that most basic necessity, simple contact and communication with another human being. While all the physical constraints of the disorder surely frustrate and even lead him to depression, what comes through even more for me is the terror of isolation, and Judt's courage in the face of that isolation.
Of all the torments visited upon human beings, the forced isolation from any kind of communication with our fellow human beings may be the most terrifying. Given that Judt seems to understand the gulf between himself and others will only widen with time, he sends these dispatches from behind the darkening curtain of his body to let the world know that he still lives, he still thinks. He still is. Such a cry from the depths is the stuff of true heroism, of true humanity, and I applaud him and look forward to more of these essays. I also want him to know that, while night seems to settle like a wall between him and his fellows, this article has reached one small island, and being someone who is up most nights anyway, will be with him in spirit, wishing and hoping his fear and terror may recede just a bit. More than anything, I want him to know that his essay has rendered him no longer alone.
