Saturday 21 December 2013

Living with narcolepsy

I posted a double---header on the science of narcolepsy and cataplexy about a week ago.  But I didn't really absorb what it must be like for those who have it.  The Beloved's big sister e-mailed me last night with a message sufficiently cryptic that I was googling all around me to find out what she was on about.  That's how I finished up watching this short documentary about Dave the Narcoleptic.  He's been living with it for so long that he doesn't think there is any real problem; then in mid sentence he falls asleep standing up and tumbles rag-doll 10m down a wooded embankment.  He dusts himself off and continues - he's just had another of his time-jumps.  That set me off to another micro-documentary about/about Casey the Narcoleptic/Cataplectic. When she falls asleep walking through a canteen, she carries away a table and two chairs; and that made me wonder how often she lays her head into a concrete post (whump) as she falls asleep.  We can to see her laughing herself to sleep to tick off one of the five key symptoms (muscle weakness under conditions of emotional overload). Casey then itemises the things she can't do, including: basketball games, ride a bicycle, drive a car, swim, engage in 'intimate relations'.  I'm just surprised Dave and Casey aren't covered in bruises and stitches.

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