Awakenings Reflection

At the beginning of the film, “Awakenings,” Dr. Malcolm Sayer, whose original name is Dr. Oliver Sacks, is looking for a job and happens to find one at a hospital to work in the research lab, but finds out that they don’t need him for that, they want him to work with catatonic patients which he thinks will be difficult for him in the long run. He then starts working with patients who suffered from catatonic encephalitis lethargica and tries to figure out why they are the way they are and how to get them to move again and get their motor skills back. The first patient that Dr. Sayer took an interest in was an elderly lady named Lucy, she was like the other patients, she suffered from catatonic encephalitis lethargica. She was “asleep for 26 years, and during those years she didn’t remember, she thought she was still 22 years old. Dr. Sayer saw Lucy walking one day, but would stop every time something was in her way and she kept walking until the pattern on the tiled floor

After Dr. Sayer went to a conference for Parkinson’s treatments, is when he learned about L-DOPA. He believes that it will help the patients which is why he wanted to do the clinical trial of L-DOPA on Leonard. At first, when they give him the first dose, he doesn’t show any signs so Dr. Sayer decides to up the dosage from 500 milligrams to 1,000 milligrams. Leonard starts to show signs by walking to another room by himself, drawing/writing, showing emotion, and talking. Dr. Sayer gives the rest of the patients L-DOPA and they all start showing the same signs as Leonard. But, after a few weeks it starts to have side effects on Leonard only, like moving involuntarily. Then after a few days it stops working on the other patients too. After that nobody ever could find a cure for encephalitis lethargica to keep them “awake” as long as they were with the