Preface by Dr. Barry J. Stern
GERMAN RIGHTS SOLD: GOLDMANN
ITALIAN RIGHTS SOLD: LONGANESI
DUTCH OFFER RECEIVED
As public relations director for the pharmaceutical company Boehringer-Ingelheim, Laetitia Bohn was in charge of accompanying a group of French doctors to Atlanta to attend the annual meeting of the American Heart Association.
Upon arrival, headaches that she dismisses as migraines force her back to her hotel room. She is seen by two of the doctors along for the trip, as her symptoms worsen. Soon she can't move her face, her arms, her legs. She asks to speak to her husband, and to a neurologist back home. But then everything stops. An unsuspected stroke leaves her "locked-in". This book is the account of her fortunately correct diagnosis and gradual miraculous emergence from a vegetable state, to become known in medical circles in the U.S. as "The Case". She is the only person in the world known to have recovered from LIS. Told in turn as dictated to her co-author (a friend of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the author of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), and as her doctors, family members and friends recall the ordeal.