Every May, our WCS PTO sponsors a Teacher Appreciation Week and in spite of the pandemic, we had our usual time of being spoiled and feted! One of our administrators ran an online game in the manner of Wheel of Fortune! Not to brag, but I won:
1. One day excused from parking lot duty in the fall!
2. One free drink in the fall (Starbucks, Powerade, etc)!
3. A $25 gift card donated by one of our student's family!
Anything with a prize is reason to compete- ask any coach or competitive person! On top of all that, the PTO gave each of the faculty a very nice AMAZON gift card which opened up possibilities and presented a problem. The possibilities are endless with their website but the problem is I don't have an account so I have to enlist my wonderful sister in law, Karen, to do my ordering. She graciously does.... and I do compensate her! I settled on household goods, some workout gloves, replacement FIT BIT bands, LUCKY YOU COLOGNE, and three books. I've got good news/bad news for Karen- I just got another $75 gift card in the past several days!
One of the books I purchased was Oliver Sack's Awakenings. If you read these devotionals, you might recall I penned an entry about the movie of the same name based on the book I just mentioned. A synopsis: Robin Williams plays the fictional version of Dr. Sacks. He goes into a Bronx hospital in 1969 and finds elderly patients in frozen, comatose states for decades, the result of childhood encephalitis lethargica, and a staff that while not uncaring, does little to improve their lot. The doctor encourages innovative methods to reach these patients but the turning point comes when he gives the patients L-DOPA, a synthetic dopamine used in treating Parkinson's. The impact is amazing, nothing short of miraculous! People who have not spoken or walked in forty years come back to life, in a matter of speaking. The story revolves around Leonard Lowe, played by Robert De Niro, the guinea pig with L-DOPA who to everyone's shock, wakes up. The drug is then administered to all the others in his condition and they too are revived! All live happily ever after, right? Not quite. Problems surface quickly as bitterness of being deprived of their prime of life shows up and the effectiveness of the drug wanes. In the end, Leonard reverts to his previous state as do the rest. The blessing was that the staff had come to care and treat the patients as real people in spite of the horrible state of their physical, emotional, and mental health.
As you can imagine, there were differences between movie and book. The movie characters tended to be composites of the real life patients. Time was also condensed in the movie whereas the actual case studies were spread out over a period of years. The book was medical in terminology which tended to lose me. And the book was much more brutal in describing issues than the movie presentation. Some descriptions were so raw as to be almost nauseating. As Sacks explained, there were no real predictors of how each patient would react and that the reactions were much different at different times in the same individual. No two patients reacted the same and it seemed to be a roll of the dice. Some of the patients were worse off after waking up. In fact, some of the recipients of L-DOPA asked to be taken off the drug rather than deal with the side effects.
I'm not sure I've ever read a book after seeing a movie and had such an opposite reaction. I've always found the movie uplifting and inspiring. And while I'm glad I read the book, I came away almost depressed with the human condition. (I also would not recommend my students read the book version.) Here are several takeaways from the print version. Oliver Sacks was willing to help human beings that many had written off as too far gone. Some of us give up on people whether students or co-workers or family members or simply acquaintances. It was fascinating to me that some of the patients had not aged facially in thirty years which Sacks attributed to not using facial muscles for expressions. (If you could just market that!!!) I also was struck with a parallel to Jesus' Parable of the Talents and the disparate responses to the Word of God, how we can never predict what they might be. I always end my essay test with my juniors who watch the movie version of Awakenings with this question:
"Knowing how it turned out with these patients reverting to their previous states, was it worth it for them to be awakened?"
As you might guess, the answers are all over the spectrum and there are valid points to be made on the many facets of the question. But here is one thing I hope my students take away from the movie: None of the miracles of Jesus ever wore off. The lepers didn't become leprous again, the deaf didn't revert to their deafness, the blind didn't lose their eyesight, etc. OK- Lazarus died again but that's beside the point! We can call medical breakthroughs miraculous, but that is a term that rightly only belongs to the Lord, at least in my opinion. Fortunately, He has given mankind the gift of being able to discover cures and procedures to greatly improve the quality of life for us mortals! But the gift of eternal life comes from a source that can't be prescribed by any earthly doctor. It comes from the Great Physician.
Applicable quote of the day:
“If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self—himself—he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it.”
Oliver Sacks
God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1
Email me at shawley@westburychristian.org
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