Awakening

The film “Awakening” (1990) is a medical drama dealing with post encephalitis Parkinson’s disease based on the true story of Oliver Sack’s 1973 memoir. ‘Awakening’ is the story of the patients who survivors of sleeping-sickness’ during the great epidemic just after WW I.

In this movie, Leonard was a smart and healthy boy, but he hospitalized for up to 30 years with a coma-like state due to encephalitis-lethargic, which also known as “sleepy sickness”, since he was 11 years old. A neurologist, Dr. Sayer discovers beneficial effects of the then-new drug, Levodopa (L-dopa), so he administered it to his catatonic patients who suffering from Parkinson’s disease. After that, all patients miraculously awakened for a period of time from the few decades of catatonic state. However, eventually, “awakening” did not last. Sadly, the patients returned to the patients to their once.

In this movie, there are a lot of issues related with the field of psychology. For example, Encephalitis-lethargic, substance abuse, Bilogical psychology

Parkinson’s disease which usually appears to seniors over the age of 60 is degenerative disease of the nervous system. Mainly, substantial nigra as a function of the detective dopamine generation and decreased motor cortex stimulation occurs. It might be an auto-immune disease, where body’s immune system attacks the nervous system in response to a throat infection. It has been reported that if Parkinson’s disease appears in a young person, acute post encephalitis would be the cause.

Most obvious symptoms are abnormal muscle movement-related; these include shaking, tremor, rigidity, slowness of movement and difficulty with walking and gait. For the patients of Parkinson’s disease, L-dopa is the main and excellent drug for the function of brain and the lack of supplement dopamine. However, when it takes a long-time, the side-effects symptoms of L-dopa occur include megalomania and facial twitching, seizure and eventually cannot be return back to normal.

Parkinson's symptoms are getting worse very slowly over a long period of time, and gradually produce a variety of complex symptoms, so every time the capacity or type of drug, route of administration, and carefully adjusts the need to go.

It must be very dangerous to use clinically a newly developed drug in humans and also a big challenging. It could be an unscrupulous thing that all the work just as followed with a doctor’s personal conviction. However, he has the basis of love towards for the patients and faith in human, so we can’t overlook his efforts.

As a whole saw, we could say that Dr. Sayer’s treatment is failed, but we have to regard him as a truly doctor who tried understanding patients, affection, and want to give patients to have hope and willing to live. That would be patients want from doctors and us.