Tonight's picture was taken in September of 2008. Mattie had undergone a month of chemotherapy by that point. Despite every form of toxicity we put into Mattie's body, his spirit and energy, wouldn't give up. Mattie was typically busy on some sort of project at the Hospital. Pictured here was our own archeology dig going on right inside a PICU room. Notice the pink bucket behind Mattie, used for nausea. The bucket seems to add a dimension of reality to this photo, as to remind us that Mattie was indeed sick! Mattie had his goggles on and tools in hand to carve away at a large piece of clay. Over time within the clay Mattie revealed or unearthed plastic dinosaur bones. After he excavated them, he then would assemble them together. Mattie loved these kits and did LOTS of them!
Quote of the day: To Carol, the number five is yellow, Thursdays are dark burgundy and the elevator bell of her apartment rings in an amazingly bright magenta. ~ Wendy Leung
So does tonight's quote get you to pause?!!! Did you skip over it? Go back and check it out. I think it SHOULD make you wonder a bit!!! Does it? One of the gifts I am giving myself this week, after seeing the doctor, is the time to spend outside on our deck reading. When I went to Boston in July, I was chatting with my niece about the various books she had or is reading. In turns out we like similar books, or I should say books that process relationships, grief, loss, and psychological content. Obviously there are many years between us, but one book she was telling me about caught my attention. It caught my attention because I was UNFAMILIAR with the neurological issue she was talking about. So she lent me her book. I am the kind of person who picks up books and reads a chapter here and there. So I can read multiple books all at one time. Mind you I never did this before Mattie had cancer. My ability, or lack thereof, to focus now is different.
Most parents are familiar with the books their children read. Some parents actually read their children's books to help them process them for school or simply to share in the overall reading experience. I of course do not have this luxury. Which is why when my niece shared a book with me, naturally I felt compelled to read it!
Any case, the book's title is, A Mango Shaped Space by Wendy Mass. Now keep in mind this is our modern generation's version of a Judy Blume book. Nonetheless, I would have to say for a book written for a tween, preteen, and teen, I am enjoying it much better than any Judy Blume book I was forced to read in school. The book's main character is a teenager with an unusual issue. Colors pop up before her eyes when she sees or hears letters and numbers. You can imagine that math class would be impossible for her because as her teacher is writing a math problem on the board, she is doing double the work to decipher the numbers from the colors that are popping up in her head! This young girl has something called Synesthesia. I can tell you I have NEVER heard of this and it apparently has been an issue that has been around for decades, just not well researched.
Only 5% of the US population has this condition. Of the various manifestations of synesthesia, the most common involves seeing monochromatic letters, digits and words in unique colors, this is called grapheme-color synesthesia. One rather striking observation is that such synesthetes all seem to experience very different colors for the same graphemic cues. Different synesthetes may see 3 in yellow, pink or red. Such synesthetic colors are not elicited by meaning, because 2 may be orange but two is blue and 7 may be red but seven is green.
Even more perplexing is that synesthetes typically report seeing both the color the character is printed in as well as their synesthetic color. For example,
is both blue (real color) and light green (synesthetic color). Daphne Maurer, a developmental psychologist at McMaster University, suggests all human brains produce a multitude of connections. But over time, depending on how much those connections are used, some are strengthened and others are pruned. “What seems to happen in synesthesia is less pruning, so you end up with a brain with extra connections,” she says. Another possibility is that these extra connections are inhibited in individuals without synesthesia. Dixon notes that people using the drug LSD commonly report seeing colors when listening to music – a common experience of synethetes. “Something in the LSD is turning on a neural connection between sound and color that is normally turned off, whereas synesthetes have these turned on all the time,” he says.
Beyond teasing out the oddities of the human brain, scientists believe there are practical applications of studying synesthesia. Synesthetes, for example, tend to have heightened memory, and Dixon says the way they make memory associations could teach the rest of the population how to improve memory.
But having synesthesia can have its downside. One woman reported experiencing colors and shapes when she hears music and when she has intense emotional experiences. Because of this, unpleasant experiences can sometimes be difficult to forget, and pain is much more vivid. She claims to get the pain two ways: physically, but she can also see it. Yet despite this, this woman says she had never wished to be “cured” of her synesthesia, even if it were possible. She says (as do many others with this issue): “I couldn’t imagine my life without it. Because of the beauty in it – the music and the art, the words and the patterns, all of that – I would keep it.”
I am intrigued by synesthesia and, of course from a psychological perspective, I am fascinated by how people react to the character in the book and how this condition impacts her life, both positively and negatively. Of course for me no book would be complete without someone dying. I haven't gotten to this part yet, but I sense this book is going to discuss the loss of a cat. This young girl is very close to her cat (perhaps her closest friend), and feels the cat embodies the soul and spirit of her deceased grandfather. So given my timing with our loss of Patches, I shall see how I feel about all of this.
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