She did not want discussion of mechanisms of demyelination and a prescription. She wanted encouragement to keep going, to continue gardening despite numbness in her legs, to travel across the country to a wedding. Her disease had changed her view of time and the journey of life, and she wanted permission and encouragement to get on with it. Of Time and Illness Patients generally have variable perceptions of how time moves, depending on the circumstances and the illness. A painful procedure can seem to last longer, but apprehension of a coming event that they dread can make time seem to move too fast.
Fever increases the rate of alpha activity in the brain and our sense of passing time.
In hypothyroidism the days slow, as do bodily movements and thinking. Regardless of whether we are well or ill, time can seem to pass too slowly or too quickly, no matter what the Newtonian clock on the wall tells us. Time seems slow in childhood, but we perceive it as moving by faster as we age. Senator Robert Kennedy, commenting on the shortened life of his brother, said that some people live their lives faster than others. The task we undertake can change how we perceive time moving.