Walking Dead

Years ago I was transferred from one nursing home to a group of 3 others. It was done rapidly and nobody told me much about where I was going. The first day someone walked me around quickly and then suggested I see my first patient on the first hall. I went there and found a man laying on the floor. As I approached he informed me very sadly "I'm dead". I asked a staff member if he was ok and they told me he always lay on the floor. Moments later a naked man emerged from another room. That was how I learned I was working in a psychiatric facility. The man who believed he was dead eventually became one of my favorite patients. He was a truly sweet man who remembered a great deal of information about my life. He just thought he was dead. One of the funnier yet saddest things I've ever seen was once a funeral home came to get a body and they pushed their gurney past him and he told them he was dead as he laid outside the room of the dead man. They were a bit confused. He had a very, very rare condition called Walking Corpse Syndrome. It is believed to happen to only a few hundred people in the world at any time. One man with the condition had a PET scan showing that he was walking around with a brain functioning as if it were in a coma. I don't think my patient had any diagnosis and he definitely didn't have treatment. Some people got really frustrated with him but he couldn't help it. This new medication addition, topomax, is making me feel like I may develop a similar condition. With all my other sedating meds I am still not getting to sleep early but once I do I am out of it. Last night I (and I can't believe I'm admitting this) wet the bed a bit because I was sleeping so soundly. It happens; with diabetes insipidus I drink so much and my body puts out so much urine that my bladder gets very full and accidents happen every so often but this one I'm pretty sure was sedation. For those who know these things I'm on 900 mg of Seroquel XR (I think that's equal to 1200 mg of regular Seroquel but can't find the conversion in what I'm allowed to read which is not drug profiles); 400 mg Neurontin; 2 mg klonopin; 625 mg lithium (only a little sedating but it all counts right now); and the 25 mg of topomax. I will get used to the topomax and eventually I'll get used to the amount I need to control my migraines but for the moment this is a crazy amount of sedation (despite the fact I'm writing this at 2 AM). Once it kicks in though it REALLY works. I'm not complaining, if it helps that's wonderful, but wow. I'm truly not sure I could raise my right hand on command for a while this morning. Oh well. Copyright 2006 www.masterofirony.blogspot.com