The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat Summary

In the book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks, chapter 3, The Disembodied Lady. Is about a woman named Christina who is twenty-seven years old, who found out to have gallstones, and removal of her gallbladder. She was admitted to the hospital and was placed on antibiotic for microbial prophylaxis. Before her surgery, Christina was feeling symptoms of Anxiety hysteria, which is the feeling of uncertainty and bewilderment. The day before her surgery hey symptoms were getting worse. She found standing impossible to do and could hold nothing in her hand even if she wants to. When she went to get tested for her symptoms and the doctors thought it was a type of hysteria and labels it as a biparietal syndrome. Christina had lost

all proprioception from her head to toe. She also had no muscle or joint sense and a slight loss of other sensory modalities; a light touch, temperature, and slight loss of the motor fibers.
After some test and diagnoses runs by neurologists it was revealed that it was one of an acute polyneuritis, but a polyneuritis that is very different, they were able to relate this to a type of Guillain-Barre Syndrome, since the only part is different about Christina’s problem is that her proprioceptive fibers, is the only main part that was damaged.

During her recovery stage, she began to move more often than before. She became dependent on the use of her eyes and ears, to help move her body. If she closes her eyes, even for a brief moment she loses control of her body and it collapses. She was the first of her kind that was diagnosed with this disorder. The name of Christina’s disorder is called severe sensory neuronopathies

(SNs).
Sensory neuronopathy, or otherwise known as sensory ganglionopathy contributes to a specific subgroup of the peripheral nervous system with specific characteristics. It is characterized by a primary degeneration of sensory neurons in the dorsal root ganglia (DRG) neuron in the spinal cord and the trigeminal ganglia neuron in the skull (Martinez et al., 2012). The damage and loss of the dorsal root ganglia neurons and their projects which, damage both of the user’s central and peripheral that results in patterns of sensory deficits. This pattern is most usually found in most polyneuropathies today and mostly considered to be a rare disorder (Martinez et al., 2012).
Sensory neuronopathy, are often linked to ataxia and extending to both proximal and distal regions of the body.

Two of the many possible symptoms of sensory neuronopathy are involuntary muscle movement of the body and an abnormal gait. Other symptoms are areflexia, pseudoathetotic hand movements, allodynia, tonic pupils, orthostatic hypotension, gastrointestinal effects, erectile dysfunction, memory deficits and behavioral changes (site). It also has an impact on all senses that include pain, temperature, position and vibration (site). Individuals who have symptoms of sensory neuronopathy often go to different types of therapies for treatment. But the therapies have been shown to not fully benefit some individuals who go there. According to Cornblath, there has been a study that had used intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) to treat individuals with sensory neuropathy that have not responded to other therapies (Cornblath, 2003). Towards the end of the study, patients showed improvement in functional tasks and sensory evoked potential, but not in sensory nerve conduction (Cornblath,

2003).
Individuals who have sensory neuronopathy can affect their average day to day lives and the lives of their family members around them in different and many ways. For Christina at first, when she was diagnosed with sensory neuronopathy she did nothing in order to try to move, she just laid her bed and rarely ate anything. After, a while she had to start to move by depending on her eyes, she had to monitor herself by vision, looking carefully at each part of her body as it moved. There used to be normal and unconscious feedback of her proprioception was now being placed off also, using her reflexes to be more integrated and fluent. When Christina goes outside and decides to travel on the bus, the way she talks and walks allows people to view her in a certain way and it is not always positive. For example, when she goes climbing the stairs of the bus, she does it in a clumsily or weird way in which she receives nothing but uncomprehending and angry snarls and people making inferences that she is drunk or on some drug.
Also, not only Christina, individuals also face problems with how having sensory neuronopathy. An individual who had many years of physiotherapy and training, for learning how to walk again, will probably never gain the ability to walk in a normal manner. In chapter 3 showed an example of a guy who had difficulty in learning how to walk again. His most challenging part of learning is how to start moving forward with his feet and legs. He is also unable to get up from a chair and he cannot crawl or even place himself on the floor. When standing and walking, like Christina he is entirely dependent on his vision and will fall down when he closes his eyes.
The different ways of how an individual life with sensory neuronopathy can be tough for them but, the guidance of rehabilitation the author provides them helps them to get used to their current life with the disorder. Christina the author helped her with her difficulties regarding her disorder. When she was learning how to move her body for the author helped her in ways of teaching and showing her how to move, by using functional recovery for her. Another example was when Christina was talking to the author on if she moved like everyone else before she was diagnosed, she was showed a videotape of her walking and playing with her kids. Also, the author described how Christina felt about her disorder. Christina says that she continues to feel with the loss of proprioception and that her body is dead, not really hers-that she cannot accept herself of the loss of feeling. She states that “I feel that my body is blind and deaf to itself…it has no sense of itself” (site). Individuals who have this disorder constantly live through a non-realm of nothingness, feeling nothing at all.
People with sensory neuropathy feel a constant of nothingness throughout their day to day lives. If people who do not have this disorder know more about it through news articles or even commercials for treatment centers will better understand what the disorder is. When they learn more about people who are suffering from sensory neuronopathy than they can show more empathy and not give people like Christina a hard time in public.
I personally do not know anyone who has sensory neuronopathy. I also did not even know that this type of disorder even exists until this chapter. I want to know what other types of treatment facilities are available to treat individuals with the disorder. I think this disorder is kind of scary to have on how you can lose feeling and movement throughout all of your body and that it takes time and concentration to do even the simplest tasks. This disorder reminds me of a form of paralysis on how people lose feeling and movement of their body parts, but in this disorder, you can lose both but still can eventually move your body parts. Also, I think the feeling of losing pain and nothingness from the disorder can eventually lead up to depression in patients and feeling of worthlessness in others as well.