On being saved by the radio

I was driving home from seeing my significant other today and listening to NPR. I heard an amazing story that touched me deeply. It was about two aspiring young artists who lived together in New York. One day they parted in the morning, each to their separate destinations, and in the middle of the afternoon the man received a phone call from the police telling him his girlfriend had been hit by a car while riding her bicycle and she was in the hospital.

He raced to the hospital and then called his girlfriend's parents. Soon, all three of them were around her bed in the surgical intensive care unit. At first she was completely unresponsive. She remained that way long enough that the doctors decided she was brain-dead and asked her parents' permission to harvest her organs for donation. They were to have a family meeting with the medical staff the next day. That night, the young woman's mother said goodbye to her daughter, whispering in her ear how much she loved her and that she would love her forever. In response, the daughter raised her arm, proving that her brain was functioning.

Still, it was very difficult for anyone to communicate with her. When people would touch her, she would respond, sometimes violently. But since she had been deaf before the accident and the accident itself blinded her, communication was nearly impossible.

After she stabilized, a decision had to be made whether to send her to rehab or to a nursing home. Since she could not communicate, the doctors were going to send her to a nursing home. Her parents arranged to take her home to a nursing home in New Orleans, telling her boyfriend only after the decision was made. The last night, he was sitting with the woman he loved and at 3 in the morning, he remembered reading online about Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller. He picked up his girlfriend's hand and wrote in her palm, slowly, one letter at a time, "I love you." She said "Oh, you love me. Thank you." She didn't know who he was, but she had received the message and responded.

He continued finger-spelling into her palm, and she kept responding; he called the woman's mother to come to the hospital and she what was happening. The young woman started saying "pull me out of the wall," and her boyfriend would write in her palm, "I can't." At this point she knew his name because he had spelled it to her several times, but she didn't connect it with his identity.

Finally, he and the mother got her to agree to put in her hearing aids, and he spoke to her. Instantly, she knew his voice and came back to full mental awareness and responsiveness. She was able to go into rehab, and is still there and making progress.

I was so struck by the fact that it was the boyfriend's persistence, born out of his love, that brought that young woman back. It was his overwhelming desire to reach her that made him keep trying things -- finger spelling into her palm, talking to her though she hadn't responded much to speech before, and he finally did "pull her out of the wall."

I am so grateful to be reminded of the enormous healing power of love -- it gives me hope to carry on.

If you want to listen to the Radiolab piece yourself -- and really, you should, they tell the story much better than I did -- here's the link: www.radiolab.org/2011/jan/25/finding-emilie/.