The Time I Almost Set Myself on Fire

A doctor's mind attempts to figure out a vexing biological puzzle.

This article is about a misunderstanding. It’s a misunderstanding about my own health, in which what I thought was a psychiatric and even suicidal crisis turned out to be nothing more than the wrong dosing in a medication taper for an unrelated sleep condition called restless leg syndrome.

I hadn’t slept well. It had been a couple weeks of not sleeping well. On top of a few years of not sleeping well. This is the kind of not sleeping well that people describe as “not sleeping well” in order to not have to say “I literally didn’t sleep at all, and that’s definitely pathological, so I’m not gonna say that part.” My situation, at least the prior night, which was debatably still going on at 5 AM, involved the “not sleeping at all” variety of the problem.

It was 5:15 AM. There wasn’t a ferry coming to the dock in front of me until 6:25 AM. It’s probably worth noting that this was the dead of early spring. It’s like the dead of winter, in that it’s just as cold, but it’s early March instead o…