You Know What Would Be Cool to Have...?

[RabidKitten]

Cotard's Syndrome.

I know that most of the time we're wishing we /don't/ get some horrible, socially crippling disease, but as far as horrible, socially crippling diseases go, I think this one is fun.

I know that Mr. Pocket knows what Cotard's is, or he should, since I told him to read the book that I found it in. Let me drop a clue to the rest of the people around here who may not know what it is.

The Cotard delusion or Cotard's syndrome, also known as nihilistic or negation delusion, is a rare neuropsychiatric disorder in which a person holds a delusional belief that they are dead, do not exist, are putrefying, or have lost their blood or internal organs. Rarely, it can include delusions of immortality.

It's like faux zombism! The thought of running around, feeling generally as if you're hovering somehow outside of the walking, living, waking world, in some dead state just sounds incredibly bizarre to me and would be a mad trip. yes, that's a medical term. You can use it.

Or, in more specific cases, walking about and thinking that somehow, you just...lack blood. How does that happen?? You just wake up one day and say to yourself "Today feels different. I feel groggy and stiff. My blood must have all dried up." Or is it something that lurks about the peripheral of your mind for a long while that, hey, I'm starting to slow down. I'm getting older. I'm drying up. I feel dusty. Then one day WHAM! Oh no, my blood's been drying up for years now, it's fine.

What about people who believe they're missing organs? How does ones mind justify such a loss? It'd be /amazing/ to hear those explanations and hear the backflips that a person's mind does in order to justify a belief.

"Well, I don't have lungs."
"What? How are you breathing?"
"I'm not breathing. It's just a left-over reflex from when I had lungs as a child. I continue to do so because I've been trained to let my diaphragm flex and chest cavity expand. Plus, I need air to talk. Oh hum."
"So, you breathe, but you don't have lungs..."
"Yes."
"What happened to them?"
"They disintegrated the winter of 2002. I was outside ni the dead of winter, I caught frostbite in my lungs, and they disintegrated."
"Uh...huh."

That would be amazing. Walking around, thinking you're some form of walking dead. Either that you're in some shelf between life and death, or you're in heaven/hell/purgatory/limbo/elysium/whatever.

Now I know that Stuart Davis has that song "Practice Dying" but it's just not quite the same thing. They don't have a /fear/ of anything. They don't fear dying or anything like that. They believe they're already dead. Wholeheartedly. It's a kind of bizarre serenity to it all. Here's one case that's shown in Wiki. (And we know that Sami loves her some Wiki):

Young and Leafhead describe a modern-day case of Cotard delusion in a patient who suffered brain injury after a motorcycle accident:[3]

[The patient's] symptoms occurred in the context of more general feelings of unreality and being dead. In January, 1990, after his discharge from hospital in Edinburgh, his mother took him to South Africa. He was convinced that he had been taken to hell (which was confirmed by the heat), and that he had died of septicaemia (which had been a risk early in his recovery), or perhaps from AIDS (he had read a story in The Scotsman about someone with AIDS who died from septicaemia), or from an overdose of a yellow fever injection. He thought he had "borrowed my mother's spirit to show me round hell", and that he was asleep in Scotland.

He just figured some vacation was his mother showing him around hell. It's madness! MADNESS! But it's a pretty cool madness.

I also think that Williams Syndrome would be kind of neat to have, but that's probably for another short winded rant.

For all of you who are interested, I first heard about Cotard's Syndrome in Chuck Klosterman's book Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story. Which is a highly recommended read on my list.



What kind of disease/syndromes/madnesses do you think would be kind of neat to have. If, you know, temporarily?

[Tigerblade]

Which book would this be in? I went through a phase earlier this year where I practically devoured books, so... can you pare it down? Doesn't sound quite like "Fierce Invalids"...

[RabidKitten]

No, it wasn't a Tom Robbin's book. I mentioned it up there, Chuck Klosterman's book Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story.

[Joe Ball]

Cotards is one crazy disease. I wonder if there's one where people think they are invisible? No one sees them at all. It's as if they weren't even there.

Hmmm... maybe I already have it...