An Evening with the Doctor

Last evening I (and about 500 other people) had the pleasure of spending a bit of time with Doctor Oliver Sacks.  Dr. Sacks is a world-renowned physician, neurologist and expert in all things brain-y.  I've been a huge fan of his since college, when we read "The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat" which contained case studies of people with prosopagnosia or face blindness.  Since then, I've been fascinated by the idea of not recognizing someone based on facial features alone.  Sufferers of face blindness, can no longer recognize even those closest to them.  Once they leave a room, and come back, the person they are seeing is now a stranger to them until they speak or use some other distinguishing noise or movement.  So while I'm sure the initial description of the book made your eyes glaze over, you have to be at least a little intrigued by the premise.

That seems to be his greatest asset, along with his straight to the point writing style: choosing fascinating topics.  His book subjects range from catatonic patients waking up after being given a drug used to treat an entirely different ailment, what music does for the brain, Temple Grandin the autistic expert on animals, and most recently, hallucinations.   "Hallucinations" was the to be the basis for his discussion at this particular event and was given to the audience with their tickets.  

Now while hallucinations are a particularly interesting concept, you (like I did) would think that the discussion would have been riveting to say the least.  Edge of your seat stuff, surely.  Stories of patients seeing and hearing all sorts of shenanigans while under the influence of all sorts.  But sadly it was not.  It was interesting but quite different than I had imagined; not bad but not what I expected.  

Seeing as he's been writing for quite some time, I should have realized he would be slightly advanced in age.  Also, given my affinity for all things British, I should have known he was a Brit.  However, neither one of these things crossed my mind.  Doctor Sacks is now 80 years old and therefore talks quite quietly and not as quickly as he used to.  Add to that the thick British accent, and you'd see where one may have some difficulty.  

Timing was another issue.  He spoke for barely 40 minutes, with 20 minutes used mostly by the moderator.  I'm assuming this was because of his age and the sheer number of people that were hoping to have their books signed after he spoke.  However, even with the unexpected speed bumps, you could tell, he's just as clever as ever.  He seemed like a very sweet man who could take on any younger experts in his field without breaking a sweat; pretty much exactly as I've always imagined him...with some added British-ness.