Midpoint Entry

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other- by Oliver Sacks
"Tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents."
From reading this book i have learned how a brain tumor can affect ones actions; how one person can be affected when they have lost half of their memory and are living in the past, but can be in a whole different world spritualy; how a lady can be disembodied in a way that she can not feel her own body, but it is still there or how someone can be tricked into thinking that their own leg is someone elses. People on this book sometimes can only tell who a doctor is by an object he/she may be carring aroung, such as a stethoscope. People in this book can be discribed as "helpless, demented, confused and disoriented." But in other cases when a disorder is cured beautiful things can happen. Like in the chapter "Hands" a blind woman who had never used her hands, and who had lost all feeling within her hand suddenly started to use her hands. She used to describe her hands as "Useless godforsaken lumps of dough-" now she uses her hands to create sculptures, which within a year become locally famous as the Blind Sculptress of St. Benedict's.
This book has shone me recoveries and patients who will stay the same till they take their last breath. It has shone me tears and smiles, andi hope the rest of the book will be as interesting as the first half.