Mans Best Friend

The concept of creativity and disease is a topic that is not unknown to me. You always hear about artists with mental illnesses, health issues (let's face it syphilis was a problem), and dealing with the issue of deafness and blindness. However, I don't think I ever realized the extent of the range of the issue. For example, I know that alcohol was/is an issue for artists of all kinds, however I don't really get it. All of the people I have been around when they were drunk are kind of incoherent , they don't seem creative or artistic at all- and most of them don't remember it in the morning. That makes it hard for me to understand how alcohol plays into creativity.

Two weeks ago I brought up the Alice in Wonderland syndrome, although it played into chapter 8, it fits better in the discussion of this chapter because this is the chapter that discusses migraines. Again, the symptoms happen in the period of time before the actual migraine. The period before being the aura. Something that I found out that I thought is interesting is that dogs can sense auras. I used to be a peer mentor at another Penn State campus, and one of the student's in my class had epilepsy so we had to attend a training meeting about how to handle a seizures. I actually have already dealt with epilepsy before as the little girl I used to babysit was epileptic, but the meeting brought up things I didn't know before. Apparently some epilepsy suffers can sense the seizures coming because they sense their aura. The girl in my class could sense the aura and described it as colors changing all around her. However, some people (like the little girl I used to babysit) couldn't sense their auras and in those cases they can get a dog that senses it for them. I thought that was really interesting that dogs can be so tuned into the to changes in humans that they alert their owner to the pending seizures. That was a little side note, but the issue of creativity was definitely there with her (girl from class). She was a painter and a musician, I'm not sure if she ever got inspiration from whatever she experienced while going through the seizures, but she was definitely creative.