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Narcolepsy is a pretty commonly known disorder, but not many people have heard of Cataplexy. Hell, I didn't even know cataplexy existed until I was diagnosed. Narcolepsy has a lot of social stigma due to popular media depictions, and It was actually very difficult to get a diagnosis. Even to this day, I have family that insist it was misdiagnosed and I just don't get enough sleep or whatever they believe will help, because mental illness / disorders don't exist to some people. Wikipedia posted:Narcolepsy is a chronic neurological disorder involving the loss of the brain's ability to regulate sleep-wake cycles. Symptoms include excessive daytime sleepiness, comparable to how people who do not have narcolepsy feel after 24–48 hours of sleep deprivation, as well as disturbed sleep which often is confused with insomnia. Another common symptom of narcolepsy is cataplexy, a sudden and transient episode of muscle weakness accompanied by full conscious awareness, typically (though not necessarily) triggered by emotions such as laughing, crying, terror, etc. affecting roughly 70% of people who have narcolepsy. I was diagnosed with narcolepsy w/ cataplexy in 2015, after dealing with the symptoms my entire life. In hindsight, the daytime sleepiness, the dizziness and falling down, the avoidance of emotions due to mentally correlating it with cataplexy attacks; it was all there. My cataplexy grew more prominent after I had some leg trauma due to Unforeseen Frisbee Shenanigans, which culminated in the first step towards finding what was wrong. Me and my wife were arguing one night and I fell over and she got worried. Worried enough to look up possible causes, and she felt I fit a lot of the symptoms of narc/cat. I wanted to be sure though, so thanks to Obama's healthcare, even a poor like me was able to get looked at. We got a doctor, or actually several doctors by the end of things, to look at me. There were multiple x-rays, physical therapy, an MRI, and other checkups before they let me see a sleep specialist. Nowadays, I walk with a collapsible (like me!) cane to help with cataplexic attacks - kinda like a life vest but for not falling over. And I got prescribed Modafinil, which stops the descent into sleep for like twelve hours, but not the tiredness leading up to it. Ask me about the diagnosis process and what its like living in a constant state of fatigue, or tell me about your experiences, that's fine too!
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Jul 7, 2016 21:38
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| # ¿ May 19, 2024 12:44 |
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I have fallen asleep while leaning against a wall while waiting for someone, while riding my bike to work, and at a pep rally back in high school, to name a few esoteric locales. I suppose Its possible he might have been narcoleptic with sleep paralysis, but there are a lot of internal factors ultimately at play.
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Jul 7, 2016 23:10
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teen witch posted:- Moving to an area where there is currently ~5 hours of night has only exacerbated my weirdo sleep situation. Do different time zones/new life situations affect you greatly or is it like a minor jet lag? I moved from Texas to California back to Texas and then to Maryland in about a year and I can say that the different time zones hosed me up. It didnt help that in Maryland I have a lovely retail job with hours sometimes that started at 6 am until 2, or at 10pm until 6 - alot of times concurrently. Overnights were garbage and if I didn't fall asleep at work, i would be pretty wiped out on the bike ride home. As a kid, I usually went to bed at like 9 or 10pm. I always got poo poo on for being a sleepy baby in high school and not staying up after midnight like the [i]cool kids/[i]. Of course, I rode the school bus which meant getting up at like 4 or 5 to catch it and then wait forever until school started. Noises affecting your dreams might have something to do with Hypnogogia, the important words in that article being threshold consciousness, which I feel sums a lot of things up. It can mean outside things affecting dreams, waking up but the dreams are still there (hallucinations from nightmares are not fun) and acting out dreams in your sleep. My wife caught me doing tennis motions once, and I had to explain to her that I was playing tennis with Waluigi at the grocery store, trying to get fruit into a basketball hoop.
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Jul 9, 2016 00:50
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opie posted:What is your sleep cycle like? Do you immediately start dreaming? Do you have ADD symptoms? My sleep cycle, according to my sleep study, is pretty unrestful and I tossed around a lot. My wife says I don't move around more than the usual person, but that I'm a pretty heavy sleeper. I would say the majority of the time I have immediate dreams, a lot of them lucid. I feel I have ADD symptoms and my wife can probably agree to that, shes always on my case about not paying attention :Y. Sleep studies are kind of a gamble, in that even if you don't test "positive" for narcolepsy, it just might not have been a good night for the testing. My sleep study was garbage and I was awake all night because it was strange and different and all I had for a pillow was a couch cushion at the hospital, and yet they were like yeah you got the narxtm.
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Jul 9, 2016 01:01
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Yeah, the medicine just inhibits actual unconsciousness. I still get really tired and wanna sleep, but I just ... can't. Narcolepsy is the worst because it feels like a natural instinct. You have to go against what is ingrained in your body as a normal thing to be able to stay awake and be functional. The medicine makes nap attacks feel draining and hollow, and while I know it's necessary so I can work and not fall asleep on the sales floor of my lovely job, it makes things feel more tiring and I guess unsatisfactory. I prefer not to take it if I'm not going out for the day to be honest. I didn't go out of my way to work out, but my job used to involve getting up early and biking about three miles a day to get to work, and then some general lifting for truck unloading. I can't say my attack frequency has gotten better or worse since my hours have shifted, my job priorites are different, i.e. less lifting, and I take the bus now instead of biking. I used to self medicate with lots of caffeine, energy drinks, and sugar when I was undiagnosed, thinking I just didn't get good sleep. Nowadays, unless I'm at work, I just don't worry too hard about needing to stay awake if I can help it. Fun fact: my manager also has narcolepsy and we had a big talk over experiences and what was the big event for each of us to go, "hey, I gotta get this looked at." Hers was driving a car into a ditch, mine was riding a bike off the sidewalk into oncoming traffic. I'm not legally allowed a license, even if I'm being treated for narcolepsy, which I guess is fair.
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Jul 11, 2016 01:36
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twig1919 posted:Narcolepsy is a condition caused by a lack of orexin ( hypocretin) in the brain. The best guesses of narcolepsy causes is an autoimmune reaction in adolescence which causes specific orexin secreting neurons to be destroyed. Unfortunately, the chemical is too big to cross the blood brain barrier which means that we can't do anything to artificially replace it. However, studies on the chemical in animals is highly interesting. That's really interesting, I didn't know the medical specifics of Narcolepsy. twig1919 posted:Blah blah blah, if your narcoleptic your much more likely to be overweight or obese because this chemical imbalance. Therefore, exercise is very importal for narcoleptics, and it helps immensely with most narcoleptic symptoms. That explains so much. Where'd you get your information? Also, it'd be neat if there were goon doctors who treat sleep disorders to weigh in on the matter.
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Jul 12, 2016 13:36
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| # ¿ May 19, 2024 12:44 |
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Narcolepsy is the big disorder that a lot of people know, just by being the 'medical sleepy thing'. Ever since I got diagnosed and take Modafinil as treatment, it's more the cataplexy that owns me nowadays. My sleep specialist prescribed me Prozac for it, which didn't work well for me. Yeah, my cataplexy didn't flare up much, because I really didn't feel much of anything strong enough to trigger it. Life just kinda happened and I didn't like how it felt, also this wasn't fun. My wife and I talked it over with my sleep specialist and we decided that the cataplexy is mostly manageable as long as I have my cane and try not to fall over onto sharp things. Anyone have any thoughts on cataplexy in particular?
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Jul 14, 2016 00:00
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