Trapped in Your Own Body

Jan. 31, 2007— -- Imagine lying inert, unmoving, totally paralyzed -- and your only way of telling people "I'm not dead!" is the tiny blink of one eye. Imagine hearing the doctors call you a vegetable, and you can't even whisper back, "I'm still here."

Welcome to a rare world of patients "locked in" to bodies that have become prisons. Steve Chiappa of Toms River, N.J., lives with this medical mystery. And so does Glenda Hickey of Leduc, Alberta.

Glenda Hickey's nightmare began on the morning of Jan. 21, 2000, with the worst headache she had ever experienced. When the mother of two little girls picked up the phone to call her husband, Kevin, at work, she fell to the floor, suffering a bad nosebleed. Glenda's daughter Kaitlyn -- not 3 three at the time -- tried to help.

"I found all these Band-Aids, and I tried putting it all over her face so the bleeding would stop, " Kaitlyn explained.

Meanwhile, as 1-year-old Kennedy slept in her crib, Kevin, Glenda's husband, kept getting a busy signal as he repeatedly phoned the house.

"And it's busy, busy, busy, busy. So, I was getting kind of mad by about 11:30 thinking, you know, 'What the heck is she doing?'" he said.

Kevin finally called a neighbor to check on his wife, who found Glenda motionless on the floor. When Kevin got home he found Glenda unable to speak, move or even indicate that she was conscious.

"She just couldn't respond," he said. "We didn't know what she was doing or thinking. We couldn't figure it out."

Cindy and Steve Chiappa were high school sweethearts, who found each other all over again in their 30s. Their fairytale love story turned into a nightmare on the way to a Christmas Eve dinner, when Steve suddenly felt ill.

Cindy took one look at her husband and dialed 911. At the hospital the doctors told Cindy the situation was critical.