The early years

When I was 15 years old, I would come home from school and immediately fall asleep.  Waking up in the morning for class?  It was a battle every single day.  It became my way of life to sleep as often as I could.  (Looking back, in my senior yearbook - I listed sleeping as my favorite past time.  RED FLAG!) I went through a dramatic change from being involved in 3 varsity sports and dance to just being active in one school club.  I started smoking cigarettes (don't judge, I know they're horrible) and guzzling Dr. Pepper like it was going out of style.  Though I didn't know it at the time, I was self medicating to stay awake and get through each day.  I became the butt of all family jokes for being so lazy.

I wanted to become a broadcast journalist.  I imagined myself working on the TODAY show.  Unfortunately, I tried a few years of college, but could never make it through a semester with all of my classes. I was a B student in high school.  I love to read and learn new things, but I couldn't handle the discipline it took to graduate from college.  It's my one regret to date.  I'm hopeful I can return one day soon and show my son that education is important.  

Fast forward to 2007.  I'm 26 years old and a single mom.  For the first time, I realized that something was seriously wrong with me.  I was at work and my boss had just told a funny joke. My legs felt like jello. I reached out to grab the chair nearest to me to stop from falling down.   "Did you see that?!" I remember asking, but my boss didn't notice anything.  This happened a few more times and I started to get extremely frightened.  Logically, I knew that this wasn't right and that it was most likely neuro related.  My mom asked me to pay attention to every detail the next time it happened.  So, when it hit again I noticed I was telling a joke.  A lightbulb went off over my head - I had been laughing every single time this happened!  I had something to go on.  That night, I sat down at the computer and typed in "muscle loss in knees while laughing".  Cataplexy.  Sudden muscle loss triggered by heightened emotions.  Cataplexy is a common symptom of narcolepsy. Not everyone who has narcolepsy will have cataplexy, but if you have cataplexy you definitely have narcolepsy.  (this was in 2007. The research of Narcolepsy is still in somewhat early stages.  I believe there are documented cases of cataplexy without narcolepsy now.).  The more I read, the more things made sense.  I had a name for this and I knew that it wasn't going to kill me!

Until next time,
J