day in a life

I am taking a course called literature and medicine, the professors have a literary background but they teach a course similar to this one for medical students too and now they are bringing this to us MA literature students. I really enjoy the class and I find the whole thing very, very interesting. But some of the books I have been reading have a let's say difficult impact on me. One is by an author from the ice and is about the time her husband was diagnosed and died from a brain tumour. She describes the affects the tumour had on him and all of a sudden, last week I was convinced I had a brain tumour myself. No joke I was certain, I called my dogs birds and I got the date for two appointments this month confused, so it HAD to be a tumour. I knew deep down that wasn't it, here on the ice we have a word about being weird that has the Icelandic word for birds in it and that is what I was thinking about when I called my dogs birds and my therapist said that 5 appointment books and calendars will confuse more than organize. So I guess that is it.

My teacher in the class I mentioned above said that people who are jumpy, try to stop someone in a movie from falling down or 'jump' when a surprising sound comes are more able than others to feel empathy. Not that if you are not jumpy you can't feel empathy, just that people who are feel it more. I am very jumpy, I was at a dinner at my uncle's house last night and I noticed how I was more jumpy when the kids made loud sound or shouts than anyone else at the table. I have always been like that, I don't like loud sounds, except music and I don't like crowds, or just a decent sized group of people so maybe I was extra jumpy last night.

I have always loved reading and found it easy to see myself in almost every character but books about illnesses and things like that are clearly not for me.

My therapist told me to write things down and I have a special book now to write into about my OCD and how to work through it, that is hard work. I let my son put butter on his bread by himself (he does all the time when he is alone) but I couldn't watch cause he did it wrong and the butter box doesn't look correct right now, but it has been two days and I haven't fixed it so I guess that is something. She also told me to stop reminding my son to be polite whenever he leaves the house, it's something I feel I have to say to make sure he is polite. One day he told me when I had said this to him that he's always polite but he knows I feel better when I say it... I think I have a very smart kid and I really need to stop doubting him, he is 9 years old.

Well I guess I have said what I wanted to say and this is a therapeutic tool, the written word has great power.