Severe depression and resentment also several deaths due to bedsores. Programs cut, visitors discouraged, staff cut leads to horrible consequences. Almost more sad were the underlying problems at the hospital. The patients upon awakening teach the staff and family that they are real people with frustrations and desires unique to themselves. I was confused at times to read that many of the patients could speak and understood some of what was happening around them. The stories of these patients and their wasted lives is overwhelmingly sad, to be frozen, dependent on others and in many cases abandoned by family is horrific. I know I skipped over hundreds of words I would never be able to pronounce. As with his other book 'The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat' he speaks as a doctor not as a novelist, making the reading difficult at times. Sacks writes case studioes of 20 patients, detailing their illness before and after L-DOPA. The movie is based on events in the book, the story line is a bit stretched. Found it this xmas season while shopping for presents.

Reviewed Jan 2005 I loved the movie and have been looking for the book. Still, if you're not familiar with a pandemic that killed or crippled tens of thousands of people across the world early last century, it's a fascinating read. I only read about half the epilogue because it was diverging into literally a page of footnotes for a page of actual main text and I also couldn't deal with Sacks writing another 'thus' to start a sentence. Did he have the patients best interests in mind or was he just trying to make a name for himself at the expense of the defenseless? Beyond that, the writing style was dull, so when the anecdotes about the patients started to seem a little repetitive, it bogged down. Repeatedly throughout the book, he makes note of saying he felt treatment might be a bad idea, yet does it anyway. In one case, Sacks (the author of the book and the doctor conducting the experiments/research) actually hid dosage of the treatment drug in a patient's food because the patient didn't want to try the treatment. On a moral level, a few patients actually benefited in the long term from treatment. That's not to say the book was without problems.

The second amazing part is the stories about those affected by the disease and getting some insight into the incredible mysteries of the human mind. I've heard of the former, but other than knowing the movie inspired by the book exists, I had no idea of the latter. The spanish influenza was long before my time as was the attack of 'sleepy sickness' that followed closely on its heels.

Awakenings by Oliver Sacks