Here’s an interesting post describing various ideas to assist people with locked-in syndrome to communicate. People who have locked-in syndrome are completely paralyzed, oftentimes unable to even move their eyes. The closest I’ve ever come to being unable to communicate was when I was hospitalized as a kid and had a ventilator tube shoved down my throat. The inability to direct someone to the exact spot of an itch or to emphatically state “No, I do not want to watch another MASH rerun” could be incredibly frustrating. The hospital staff did develop a laminated communication board that let me whine and complain by pointing at letters, but it was an excruciatingly slow and cumbersome method. I invented my own system of tongue clicks and facial gestures to communicate simple concepts and some of those adaptive behaviors have become deeply ingrained. To this day, I flutter my eyebrows when I’m saying “yes”.
