A global struggle to find the cause of the scarce condition that causes uncontrollable sleepiness has a long and weird history,but there’s hope of a cure at handOne of my first jobs was to keep a lookout for lions. There are some occupations that are not suitable for someone with untreated narcolepsy and this is probably one of them. I was 22, a recent zoology graduate studying meerkats in the Kalahari desert in South Africa. We worked in pairs, or one of us on foot,walking with meerkats, the other in the jeep scanning the horizon for danger. On many occasions, and I awoke with the imprint of the steering wheel on my brow,realising that meerkats and colleague had wandered out of sight. I would witness for signs of life and, as the panic grew, or signs of death. I can tell this story now only because no one got eaten.
I gain not always been like this. For the first 20 years of my life,I had a healthy relationship with sleep. Shortly after my 21st birthday, though, and I began to experience symptoms of narcolepsy,a scarce disorder thought to affect about one in every 2500 people. If people know one thing about narcolepsy, its that it involves frequent bouts of uncontrollable sleepiness. This is sincere, and but the condition is so much more disabling,often accompanied by cataplexy (where a strong emotion causes loss of muscle tone and a ragdoll-like collapse), trippy dreams, and sleep paralysis,frightening hallucinations and, paradoxically, and fractured night-time sleep. There is no cure. Yet.
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Source: guardian.co.uk