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Awakenings (full 1973 documentary)

Thanks to all those who took the time to stop and watch, for this is what Lillian, Lola, Ed, Mary and the others wished for: They wanted to be remembered. They asked to be filmed. The book and the documentary focus on different patients, mainly. Therefore we lack account regarding the developments of some of the stories. But for Lola, Sylvie, Mary and Ed we do have some insight into their lives following 1973. After 1973, Lola’s situation was stationary, meaning by this that she kept being subject to very extreme reactions, either way. She kept “exploding” and “freezing” but, as Sacks is keen to stress, her management of these reactions still was the most balanced he ever saw, and Lola was anyway, as of her nature, pretty much on top of things. She would engage in all the available activities: Bingo games, gardening, poetry readings, even day-trips. This was possible, in spite of the worsening of her dystonia and kyphosis, thanks to the help of another patient she had befriended. The two of them, in what Sacks describes as a sort of “symbiosis”, came to the rescue of each other: Lola would not have been free to move around without her friend pushing her chair; and, also, she would not have been able to express herself, for her speech had become more and more unintelligible to anybody else but that one woman, who thus used to step in and “translate” her words. Lola, on her part, would help her friend, who had become by that time slightly brain-damaged, by guiding her and providing initiative. As Sacks points out, it was a matter of much more than just practical need: their human connection and noble kindness would move everybody’s hearts and was a true blessing to witness. All of this could not be hoped for before L-Dopa came. Her “re-birthday” dated back to the 7th of May of 1969. By the time Sacks was writing this notes, she was 13 years old and grateful. Sylvie was the one who never really wanted to wake up. You may have seen the movie starring Robin Williams: well, together with Mary, she inspired the character of Lucy. The singing belonged to Mary; the nostalgia belonged to her: «I know it is not 1926… I just need it to be». The “Sleeping Beauty”, as Sacks calls her in his book, never indeed fully woke up again, after the summer of 1969. She fell back into that inscrutable dimension she had been confined in since the terrible nightmare she had had in 1926. The oculogyric crises, which had never ceased affecting her, caused her death on one day of June, 1979: she was eating and, when her neck stuck backwards, she chocked. Then there is Mary: Lucy’s singing voice. Her first response to L-Dopa had been tragic: her personality had shattered so badly, that Sacks could not help but ending the paragraph about her with rather pessimistic words, doubting any possible happy future outcomes. Instead, by the early months of 1973, Mary started to put herself back together and her lovely attitude was finally able to surface again, and so her skills. Sacks writes in his last notes how the last four years of her life had been the best she had experienced in the last 40. Being, for the first time, free from the most severe post-encephalic symptoms and from the rollercoaster of her early years with L-Dopa, Mary started to live: she would engage with the other patients, take care of the garden and, most of all, she would sing. In 1976 she broke her hip. The surgery resulted in complications and she found herself stuck in bed for months, once again. She did not complain. The day before she passed away, she asked for Mozart’s Requiem to be played. And last, for those who have seen the movie: Leonard is Ed. Ed was awakened in1969 - and that was an epic rise and an epic fall. The drug’s side effects hit him the hardest, prompting Sacks to take him off medication almost immediately. He did try again multiple times to figure out the dosage, but the balance was never found - maybe it was nowhere to be found, for him. No drug (nor L-Dopa or amantadine) would work: it would only trigger unbearable tics and exaggerated pathological responses. It felt like a curse. In 1978 his overall physical health started deteriorating: weight loss, recurrent infections, sepsis, bedsores… It all left him strained, tormented by pain. In 1980 he typed on his board: «It’s just pain and pus, pus and pain. It’s not worth it. That’s not life». In 1981, since his condition was plummeting, out of desperation and lack of options, L-Dopa was tried again. And, this time, it worked. Not by generating torturing tics, but actually worked, the way it was supposed to, the way it should have, and never had, in 12 years. Ed’s reaction was one of blind rage. He could scream now, so he did: «Look at me! I’m a wreck, I’m dying, and you awaken me NOW?! This miracle is revolting, it’s obscene! For Christ’s sake, leave me alone! Let me die in peace!». They did. Soon after, he died.