“Awakenings”: Scientific Studies Essay Example

and would give her more encouragement to want to start walking again.

With the help of one of Dr. Sayer’s nurses, he gets the tiles of the floor painted. The day after they had painted the tiles, he brought Lucy into the room, and once again, he tried getting her to get out of her chair and walk. It took him a few minutes but his test had worked and she was up and was able to walk.

Another one of Dr. Sayer’s patients was a man by the name of Leonard. Leonard is a full-grown adult who entered a coma in his early teens. Dr. Sayer ran an EEG scan to see if there was any activity in Leonard’s brain. When Dr. Sayer said Leonard out loud, there was brain activity shown on the results. After proving that there was actual brain activity in Leonard, Dr. Sayer tested Leonard with a medication called L-Dopa. The medicine was commonly used to treat Parkinson’s disease. Although Leonard’s sickness was nothing close to Parkinson’s disease, Dr. Sayer had faith that the medicine would bring Leonard back and felt that they had nothing to lose.

Dr. Sayer gave Leonard a dose of 250 mg. with orange juice but it had no effect on Leonard. The other doctors had no hope for Dr. Sayer’s idea with the medicine and when it had no effect on Leonard, they acted as if they weren’t surprised. Dr. Sayer didn’t want to give up on this possible treatment just because of one negative result and because the other doctors showed no sign of hope.

He upped the dose to 500 mg. and gave it to Leonard with

milk instead of orange juice because he was thinking that the acid in the orange juice may have had some type of negative effect with the medicine. After Leonard was given the 500 mg. dose of L-Dopa, there was still no change in his condition. Dr. Sayer decided to double the dose one last time. After being given the 1000 mg. dose, Leonard awoke! He was able to get out of the bed, walk to a table and begin writing. On the piece of paper, he wrote his name. That was proof that the medication Dr. Sayer gave Leonard had worked successfully.

Dr. Sayer was ecstatic about Leonard’s improvement with his help and the medication and then began giving it to his other patients who had the same disorder Leonard has. Over just a few days, the clinic went from being dull to being alive thanks to Dr. Sayer’s test.

After talking with his patients, he learned that all of them think it’s the same year as it was when they entered the coma they were in for many years. The medication was working without any major problems for several days until one day when Dr. Sayer was talking with Leonard about the medication Leonard was being given. Dr. Sayer informed Leonard that he was going to stop the dosages being given for a series of tests that needed to be run.

Leonard didn’t like what he was being told because he was afraid that once he stopped getting the medicine, he would enter the coma again and would never wake up back up. Leonard then stood up and stormed out of the room and began walking towards

the exit because he wanted to go for a walk outside. The security tells him that he’s not allowed to leave and Leonard began screaming and got violent with the security and Dr. Sayer. Dr.Sayer then begins seeing the negative side effects of the drug that once helped his patients.

As Dr. Sayer was ending the doses of the medication to his patients, things slowly began getting back to how they were before he was able to wake his patients. Leonard and the other patients began having slurred speech, tremor shaking, and difficulty with walking. Dr.

Sayer’s final results were that the human spirit is more powerful than any drug and what matters the most is bonding and talking with his patients, and simple things to help his patients along the way to being healed.