A Leg to Stand On by Oliver Sacks M.D

Author:Oliver Sacks, M.D. [Sacks, Oliver]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2020-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

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Wednesday the 11th had been set as The Day—the appointed day for me to arise, and stand, and walk. For the first time since my accident I would assume, it was to be hoped, the erect position—and erectness is moral, existential, no less than physical. For two weeks, for eighteen days, I had been prostrate, recumbent: doubly so—physically, through weakness and inability to stand; morally, through passivity, the posture of a patient—a man reduced, and dependent on his doctor.

The posture, the passivity of the patient lasts as long as the doctor orders, and its end cannot be envisaged until the very moment of rising. And this moment cannot be anticipated, or even thought of, even hoped for. One cannot see, one cannot conceive, beyond the limits of one’s bed. One’s mentality becomes wholly that of the bed, or the grave.

Until the actual moment of rising, it is as if one were never to arise: one is condemned (so one feels) to eternal prostration. As Donne wrote,

I cannot rise out of my bed till the physician enable me, nay, I cannot tell that I am able to rise till he tells me so. I do nothing, I know nothing of myself….

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