Last week

The last week was a full week. Monday and Tuesday there was heavy fog which is very unusual for icelandic weather conditions.
Monday
Monday afternoon I had a meeting at Marinós home, introduction of still new people, talking about the summerwork to come and things like that. He is going to get a new timetable, he is going to lay the table each day,learning to change his bed covers. Otherwise everything is fine as are the folks working there.
After that I had to hurry home as Gerður and Ottar came for a visit and a couple for dinner. In the evening I went to “a new born baby” visit and was very proud to find that house through the darkness and fog in a suburb I had never been to before. To finish that day I fetched Monika from her evening shift at the old people’s home.

Tuesday
Tuesday evening Valur and me went to a lecure in the icelandic gene institute (íslenska erfðagreining) where they have a huge project going in the genes of people with autistm and their families. It is well on the way and some results will be published in the end of this year. They got four groups to work with: the people with autism; their close families and the larger families, going back to grandparents and sideways to the siblings of the parents and their children; students at the university of Iceland; normal pupolation. They take blood of all the people with autism and the closer families (1700+ samples by now), send questionaires, and again take blood of some of the other groups. Then they compare the genes and look where differences are. These results then will go to other specialists who will work to look at the functions which are connected to the gene(s) in question. That, maybe, will be followed by some drug to overtake or steer the function of this malfunctioning gene. As one example: With one family there has been found a bit of one gene missing which is known to fine tune the reactions of the brain by producing an encyme. If this missing bit is found to be missing at the gene information of many people with autism there would be a point to start working with. But it is known that autism must be a cluster of different changes in different gene strings, so there will never be one drug to help. But… at the end of this year we will know more.

Wednesday
Wednesday evening I went to another lecture about CAT (Cognitive affective training). That consists of a bunch of materials to teach people with autism to understand their own feelings and those of other people. A very interesting way of working which we Must get for our class.

Thursday
Thursday evening found me in the countryside. Heike arrived for Jakobinas birthday from germany, Margrét fetched her from the airport and together me and Heike drove to the east. There we had a nice and relaxing evening

Friday
and the next noon I collected the children of Jakobina from their different places, schoolbus and playschool and went back to Reykjavík, while the young women, five of them, went for a long ride (see photos of birthday.) The children all slept at Margréts place where I will fetch them later.