Incessant Chatterings of Yours Truly

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.

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):

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?