Real Life Zombies (Sort of)

Dr. Dratoc is almost done with another 18 hour shift. He’s tired. He’s bleary-eyed. He’s already spent five hours in the OR patching up a drunk with bite-shaped wounds on his legs (“I think it was a dog or some kind of wild cat,” the drunk kept saying) and another two hours on a code in the geriatric wing. They managed ot save the old guy, but Dr. Dratoc is tired. He’s heading for the locker room, to drop of his lab coat, grab jacket, and head home.

He turns the corner, taking a short cut through ER, and standing there, just staring at him, is a zombie.

A walking corpse, to be precise. Middle-aged man, dressed in a filthy shirt underneath two jackets and a coat. Cold sores open and oozing around his mouth. His pants are in tatters, stained with blood, and as Dr. Dratoc stands there, trying to decide if he’s hallucinating, the man (thankfully?) collapses.

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Cotard’s Syndrome was named for a French neurologist who, back in 1880, met a woman who insisted she had no brain. Since then, although it’s not common, several cases have emerged with similar symptoms. Sufferers describe themselves as dead, or invisible, or having limbs that don’t belong to them. People with Cotard’s will seem to be obsessed with death, take no pleasure in any stimuli, and will sometimes forego normal hygiene.

PET scans have shown a link between Cotard’s and subdued activity in the front and paratiel regions of the brain, like that of someone in a deep coma. This can be the result of depressive episodes or drug induced metabolic imbalances.

Recently, meta-analysis of drug databases and hospital admissions have suggested that in patients with renal failure, some drugs aren’t broken down adequately, and increased levels of 9-carboxymethoxymethylguanine (CMMG) can cause obstructions in certain cerebral arteries. In some people, this can have disturbing psychiatric effects. Dialysis is often the only way to clear CMMG from the brain.

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As tired as he is, Dr. Dratoc leaps forward, checking for a pulse. He calls for an orderly, and together they get the man up on a table. He opens his eyes, pupils surrounded by a sickly yellow and shrunk to pinpricks. “I’m a dead man,” he says. His breath is awful. “I’m dead. Put me in the ground. I am dead.”

Dr. Dratoc checks the man for ID, and finds a bottle of pills—Zovirax. Probably for the cold sores. Dratoc does his best to stabilize the man. He does a quick examination. Swollen kidneys. Skin under his fingernails, matching deep scratches in the rash on his legs. Bruising on his arms, especially between the wrist and elbow.

Dratoc is exhausted. Think, think. Swollen kidneys, itching, rash, the coats could indicate he feels cold, the bruising, from falling several times, due to dizziness? Could this be renal failure? Dratoc makes a decision. “Get this man on dialysis, right now.”