Rikke Schmidt Kjærgaard

“I was going home more frequently and each time was a small victory. But there is something inherently wrong about visiting your own home. You should never have to do that: You should simply go home. And I had been away for so long that even as I went back more often, I couldn’t help feeling removed from things.”
― Rikke Schmidt Kjærgaard, The Blink of an Eye: A Memoir of Dying - and Learning How to Live Again: A Memoir of Dying―and Learning How to Live Again

“I came to see that survival here was all about hope, the most important fuel to our brain-damaged engines. Without it, getting—or being taken—out of bed for another identical day of confusion and failure might have been futile, for both the patients and their relatives. If you woke up with the hope that today was the day you were going to pour yourself a cup of tea, or make a conscious decision to get to the breakfast room and eat cereal with your new friends, then you were on the road to some form of recovery, even if you were never going to be able to make yourself tea again or get yourself down to breakfast. But hope was also the heaviest burden and one that many patients couldn’t carry for themselves. My doctor told me that she often made a contract with her patients to carry it for them, to keep it alive.”
― Rikke Schmidt Kjærgaard, The Blink of an Eye: A Memoir of Dying - and Learning How to Live Again: A Memoir of Dying―and Learning How to Live Again