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Dec 3, 2002 Most people reading this article will have had some experience wheather they realise it or not with some kind of "Sleep Disorder". Sleep Disorders are made the butt of jokes world wide being portrayed in movies as funny, with people with Narcolepsy falling asleep in their soup whilst out to dinner, or dropping to the ground asleep on the side of the road etc, well really when you think about it, how funny can this be for the person who is acctually living with this problem? I can tell you that this is actually not as Fun or Funny as it appears to be. I live with quite a serious sleep disorder, Narcolepsy and my road to diagnosis has been far from funny or fun. There have been moments, I must admit where the funny side of the problem has outweighed the serious but they are few and far between. Since the symptoms of this disorder have taken over my life, I have fallen asleep while eating breakfast...only to wake up with my head in a glass of orange juice, (this was one that keept the laughter in my house going for about a week). My next incident was life threatening as I was sitting in the backyard pool with a group of friends and fell face first to sleep into the water and had to be carried to bed (a not so funny incedent....I no longer swim alone). It is things like this that make life so difficult for a person with a sleep disorder. People who have the luxury of being in control of their sleeping habits dont really think about how it must be to have no idea when or where you might just drop off, and the things that a disorder like this will require you to give up. Things like Driving a car....how nice, to fall asleep doing some great speed on the highway. Running or taking a walk alone, swimming and basically anything that you might consider doing by yourself, so next time you are about to have a laugh at the woman who is sleeping in her soup, spare a 20 second thought, and consider how your life would change, if you were struck down with a condition like this....and then see how funny you think it might be. ------------ Comment on this column in the forum. ------------ |
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