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Narcolepsy + Me = True

January 27, 2008 at 9:46 pm (Health, Life, Science) (disorder, Health, Life, narcolepsy, narcoleptic, school, Science, sleep, teacher)

I’ve had this problem of falling asleep in most of my classes every single day of school since freshmen year. I always figured it was because I wasn’t getting enough sleep or whatever. However, I was bored and just decided to look up narcolepsy…and guess what? Just read on.

The main characteristic of narcolepsy is excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS), even after adequate night time sleep. A person with narcolepsy is likely to become drowsy or to fall asleep, often at inappropriate times and places. Daytime naps may occur without warning and may be physically irresistible. These naps can occur several times a day. They are typically refreshing, but only for a few hours. Drowsiness may persist for prolonged periods of time. In addition, night-time sleep may be fragmented with frequent awakenings.
In most cases, the first symptom of narcolepsy to appear is excessive and overwhelming daytime sleepiness. The other symptoms may begin alone or in combination months or years after the onset of the daytime naps. There are wide variations in the development, severity, and order of appearance of cataplexy, sleep paralysis, and hypnagogic hallucinations in individuals. Only about 20 to 25 percent of people with narcolepsy experience all four symptoms. The excessive daytime sleepiness generally persists throughout life, but sleep paralysis and hypnagogic hallucinations may not.
The symptoms of narcolepsy, especially the excessive daytime sleepiness and cataplexy, often become severe enough to cause serious problems in a person’s social, personal, and professional life.
In narcolepsy, the order and length of NREM and REM sleep periods are disturbed, with REM sleep occurring at sleep onset instead of after a period of NREM sleep. Thus, narcolepsy is a disorder in which REM sleep appears at an abnormal time. Also, some of the aspects of REM sleep that normally occur only during sleep — lack of muscular control, sleep paralysis, and vivid dreams — occur at other times in people with narcolepsy. For example, the lack of muscular control can occur during wakefulness in a cataplexy episode; it is said that there is intrusion of REM atonia during wakefulness. Sleep paralysis and vivid dreams can occur while falling asleep or waking up. Simply put, the brain does not pass through the normal stages of dozing and deep sleep but goes directly into (and out of) rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. This has several consequences:

• Nighttime sleep does not include as much deep sleep, so the brain tries to “catch up” during the day, hence EDS.
• People with narcolepsy may visibly fall asleep at unpredicted moments (such motions as head bobbing are common).
• People with narcolepsy fall quickly into what appears to be very deep sleep.
  They wake up suddenly and can be disoriented when they do (dizziness is a common occurrence).
• They have very vivid dreams, which they often remember in great detail.
  People with narcolepsy may dream even when they only fall asleep for a few seconds.

Artist’s rendition of narcolepsy:

The worst part is, teachers don’t consider narcolepsy when looking at a sleeping student. No, they just get pissed. What if I can’t help sleeping during a long and boring lecture or a presentation by a fellow student that also happens to be boring? This is a serious disorder. In fact, I hga;loh. vjn h,ith                                    v                            m                                                                                             bg whoa. I just had the craziest dream. I’m gonna go write this shit down and write a book based on it just like that guy that wrote Gulliver’s Travels. And I’ll get fucking rich. Hellz yeah.

Me and my future writing career: