Narcolepsy: Mislabeled and undiagnosed – Part 1

Narcolepsy is a neurological disorder due to the brain not being able to normally regulate a persons sleep-wake cycles.

As a child, I slept just as much as the average kid, which included naps. As a teenager when naps are not part of the norm, but laziness is, I was labeled as such. Including the moodiness and irritability that also accompanies the teenage stereotype, these symptoms were also written off. I was a C+ average student where my learning abilities consisted of pulling mostly A’s on all home or class assignments but failing most tests and exams because of retention of information. This was before the days where most kids were linked with ADHD so I was mislabeled a bad student.

As a young adult in a relationship, the common joke between us was renting the movie for more than a day because I was bound to fall asleep before the opening credits or on any road trip he was going to have to drive the entire way because I was always asleep in the passenger seat before we left city limits. Again, not too much thought went into it being a life-altering issue. At that time, going to college online or at your own pace was not available or attractive to me because of my chronic falling asleep and retention of information. My education faltered and I instead sought certificate programs or short-term educational diplomas. My goal was to become self-employed to where I could allow time for these waves of sleep that hit me whether I was driving, working, or even talking in person with someone. Again, just plodding through life, dismissing what was going and not really evaluating it as a problem. By this time, I had just assumed it was part of my nature.

Then I married in my early twenties and my now ex-husband always told me I was depressed that’s why I spent so much time in bed during the day. Contrary to popular belief, people with narcolepsy don’t sleep well at night. So my average day began by taking ephedrine (before it was banned in the US) in the morning with serious amounts of caffine. By lunchtime, I was ready for the 20 minute nap in the local tanning salon, in which I passed out before the bed even got warm and a few times woke up to the knock on the door as my time was up. Another ephedrine and an espresso to supress the 3:00 “sleep wave” and if I didn’t sit down at all before bedtime at 10:00 I was able to remain awake until then. Then I was taking over the counter sleep aids in order to get a full, uninterrupted night’s