No.273
Does anyone here have any diagnosed sleep disorders? How have they affected your life? What medications (if any) are you taking for them and are they worth the side effects? What do you wish more people knew about your disorder? Or do you just want to vent about it for a bit?
I ask because I was diagnosed with Type-1 narcolepsy several years ago. This is the type you see in TV and movies. My immune system is attacking the sleep center of my own brain. Any sudden change of emotion, such as shock, unexpectedly laughing, or stress, makes my arms and legs go limp and often gives me an erection as the blood vessels loosen. So I'm basically locked, awake, in a coma for 30 seconds. I'm also incredibly tired all the time without medication. No amount of sleep, coffee or excitement will help. It fucking sucks.
Fortunately my meds really help out and let me live a mostly-normal life. I take what is essentially legal GHB to reset my REM-to-nREM sleep cycles, as without it I spend about 80% of my sleep in REM (dreaming sleep). It's about 30% of sleep in healthy people. This is the primary diagnostic sign of narcolepsy. I also take generic ritalin during the day to keep my energy up.
I just wish people IRL understood what I'm going through without me having to explain outright. No boss, I didn't fall asleep on the job because I was partying all night. I got 14 hours of sleep and still hallucinated right after waking up. No, you don't understand how it feels because you "pulled an all-nighter once in college". Get two hours of sleep a night for a month and then come back to me. No, I don't want to go out drinking, because if I mix alcohol with my meds I will probably die and it's not worth skipping them to be a literal zombie tomorrow who can't even remember what street he lives on.
No.274
>>273I don't have any sleep disorders (besides "smartphone insomnia"). However, I found this video from the narcolepsy page on Wikipedia to be very informative about what cataplexy does and why it happens in the first place. I feel that explaining the low-level mechanism is important to help others understand why narcolepsy is different from lack of sleep.
Added bonus for being a 5 minute video in the current year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Narcolepsy.webmThe video mentioned that people affected by cataplexy might avoid situations where sudden emotions might cause an episode. To OP and others, what situations have you avoided (real examples), and how do you think this has affected your personality and your relationships?
No.275
>>274Fortunately I was diagnosed pretty early into its development. As soon as I noticed a trend where my face went numb after I got angry, I thought I was pinching a nerve in my face or something and went to a doctor. Over the years my cataplexy and sleep attack frequency have been getting worse without medication, but my dosages have been getting larger to compensate.
These days I can function pretty normally for most of the day, but I definitely start to notice a drastic decrease in my energy and mental ability after about ten hours or so.
