AWAKENINGS

Since I have joined Musical Moving I thought it necessary to educate myself a bit about Parkinsonism and was kindly lent the book 'Awakenings' written by physician and neurologist Oliver Sacks. Although the book is primarily studies of patients suffering from a sleeping - sickness, who have been awakened by the administration of a new wonder drug L-Dopamine, there are sections which describe the Parkinsonian condition in great detail as in the 1960's patients where also administered the same drug.

Sacks' writes particularly about the Parkinsonian experience of space and time and the neurological manifestations of the disease, he recalls the work of Dr James Parkinson who defined Parkinsons as a singular condition in which there are forms of behaviour, rather than a symptomatic disease. Tremor or shaking commonly thought of as the most obvious symptom, is rarely constant and by no means an isolated characteristic of the condition. It is not merely motor, the resistance to movement, the speeding, slowing, stopping and starting also occur in the mind throughout thought patterns. It is apt then that dance and also singing are activities in which Parkinsonians find spirit but also strategies to master certain behaviours.

'We must come down from our position as objective observers, and meet our patients face-to-face; we must meet them in a sympathetic and imaginitve encounter: for it is only in the context of such a collaboration, a participation, a relation, that we can hope to learn anything about how they are."
Sacks.