Awakenings 1990

Holiday is at the corner, and I just watched a movie entitled Awakenings (1990) recommended by my Neurology teacher, Olga Victorovna Kurushina. She said the actor in this movie portrayed the side effects of L-DOPA, the first line drug for treatment of Parkinson's disease.

This is based on a true story. The doctor discovered that the drug L-DOPA can be used to let his first patient Leonard, then other catatonic-like patients to once again move and speak again, or in a simpler word, "awakening" from their catatonic state. But soon everyone realised that this brief moment of "awakening" doesn't last long. Eventually, no matter how much they increased the dosage of L-DOPA, rather than continue the "awakening" period, they experienced the side effects of L-DOPA, such as dyskinesia and paranoia symptoms. The patients eventually returned to their catatonic stage. Leonard and many of the patients experienced brief periods of awakening, but never as dramatically as they did in the summer of 1969.

This movie really strikes me a lot. There is so much a doctor can do, and there is so little a doctor can do. A dosage of 1000mg L-DOPA can awake Leonard from his catatonic state, yet when the "chemical window closed", no matter how much Doctor Sayer prescribes the L-DOPA, Leonard eventually fall back to his previous state. Dr. Sayer said to the nurse, "You told him I was a kind man. How kind is it to give life... only to take it away again?" Seriously, doctors are just humans, neither can they do mircales, nor resurrect a person, only God can performs miracles, and raises those people from dead to alive.

Another things that strikes me so much is when Leonard start to becomes more aggressive and having dyskinesia due to the side effects of L-DOPA, he start to seek freedom, and when it is not granted by the hospital administrators, he becomes furious and agitated. He tries to seek his own way out. Even when Dr. Sayer tries to explain his situation, he hardens his heart, and listen not to him, even to the point to push Dr. Sayer away. But when Leonard comes to his sense, when he realises how helpless he is, he cries out to Dr. Sayer, "Help me". He also asks whether Dr. Sayer can stop this process, though Dr. Sayer has no idea what to do, yet he says, "Do not give up on me."

Isn't our own situation similar to Leonard's? There is NOTHING that we can do for our own sinless state. For the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). Everyone of us, ever since from the Fall, have sinned. All of us fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). Some people, deny their situation. Some people, recognise their situation, but they try to save themselves through their own works and good deeds.

I just finished my Psychiatry cycle, and while I am reading about electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), I read about Hay's paradox: the organ giving consent is the organ affected. So in the same way, we who are trying to save ourselves, are the people in trouble. So actually, all of us, without exclusion, like Leonard. There is nothing that we can do to help our ownselves. This is the bad news.

But there is good news also. What God wants from us is not that we trust our ownselves and trust our own works to save ourselves by our own strength and power, but like Leonard, calls up to Him and say "Help me", for, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved" (Romans 10:13). What God wants is to look away from ourselves, and trust Him and Him alone, trust in His work that has been once and for all done on the Cross. Trust Him that He and He alone can deliver us from our sinful state. The old hymn sings, Trust and obey, for there is no other way. Really, there is not other way, but to trust and obey, the One and only One. But remember also, different from Dr. Sayer who can just do what a man can do, God can do what man cannot do. Not only He can awake us, He can make us to born again, so that we can see the kingdom of God (John 3:3). And we can also assure that He will never give up on us, because He says, "And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." (Matthew 28:20)

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"The time has come," He said. 

"The kingdom of God is near. 

Repent and believe the good news!"  

Mark 1:15