I seem to be doing tons of sobbing lately.

I've run out of tissues, and have added a new kind of pride to my already extensive list. The kind that makes you pretend like a boulder just got into your eye when someone looks at you incredulously and asks," Shite girl, are you crying again?" and then rolls their eyes.

First was when the alien died in CJ7, and the second when i watched Le Scaphandre et le papillon (the diving bell and the butterfly).

Let's concentrate on the second, the true story of Mr Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor of Elle, in paris. He suffered a massive haemorrahage, leaving him with a body felled by total paralysis except for eyes able to blink. (Later they sewed up one eye due to a malfunctioning of his tear ducts.) The remarkable bit is that he was totally, and horribly alert. This is termed all too aptly: Locked-in-Syndrome.

So this chappie starts dictating; tediously blinking through the entire alphabet to construct words, sentences, chapters, and finally a bestseller. He lays bare his horror, humour, emotions and regrets alternatingly living and not living life to the full.

Perhaps the scenes are more raw for me because i've had patients who've had a total stroke out before and who were unable to move and speak. They might not have had full mental capacity, but to be constrained to a life on a bed and to the terrible monotony of..just lying is hell on earth even to consider. You can never again taste the pleasure of food or indulge a craving, someone wierd cleans you everyday and you have no choice if you don't feel clean enough. No one can scratch that infernal itch for you, or change the channel of a static tv that droans endlessly. Worse i feel, is the silence and supernatural length of the night when so many of them lie awake because of the hours spent sleeping during the day.

During the night, no one else is around. Fear sets in- So many things can happen. Choking on your own saliva, a pain that gets worse and worse and you can neither shift, nor call out; these could be surpassed by your own demons made incarnate, or nightmares that you can never verbalise or be comforted from.

For a while Jean-do appeared to be recovering well, regaining use of his neck muscles and managing to grunt songs, but only days after the publishing of his book, he passed.

The direction of the film, cast and landscapes of france make it impossible for me not to fall in love with the bitter story.

The gleamings of what i have been reminded of from this should be obvious, but oh, how foolish i feel fretting about the small things and people in my life. And how dead to life i have been.. If i have to go through the same thing as jean-do did, i'd be horrified more by what a waste of oxygen and carbon i was. If it happened to you today, what would you regret?