Narcolepsy Forum Posting

Posted by Sleepy-head on November 22, 2002 at 04:06:27:

In Reply to: Cataplexy or something else? posted by PerchanceToDream on November 20, 2002 at 12:10:08:

OK
I looked at the questionnaire, but that wasn’t much help as it was under “awakenings”

I’m thrilled that you can all profit from my expensive mistake. I ordered 3 books by express carrier instead of the normal postage. Yesterday evening I was amazed to have a guy from UPS turning up with William Dement’s “promise of sleep”

Dr. Dement was one of the very first sleep researchers, and also one of the first to take a special interest in Narcolepsy. (I already have his earlier book called the sleep watchers)
This book is on all sleep related problems, but as a lot of them seem to tie in with each other, my preliminary reading has been fascinating.
I read a lot, I figure that when I’m not awake enough to do anything constructive, I might as well read. If I retain a fraction of the information, the time has been put to good use.

I had heard of sleep drunkenness, so I looked for that, and after a few interesting detours along the way, I came up with
What you have sounds like it should be the following

It classifies under the Parasomnias, which means that it is a disorder concerning the transition from Sleep to wake (and back again)
It is an Arousal disorder
And is called “Confusional arousal” but is also known as “sleep drunkenness” or “excessive sleep inertia”.

Walking into things isn’t mentioned but, under the general description one is very slow at waking up, has major memory problems and does strange things like, picking up a lamp and holding a conversation thinking it is the phone. It is most typical when someone is woken from deep sleep in the first part of the night. (page 457)

Unfortunately I didn’t find more, but you could search Pub med for articles with those names.

Dr. Dement describes N as a disorder in which the sufferer may “get stranded on sleep’s borderlines, where everyday rules of thought and behaviour don’t seem to apply” (page 195) He also writes that “ Occasionally PWN are neither clearly awake nor clearly asleep, they may be existing simultaneously in two different states of mind” (page 199)

By the way, according to Dr. Dement, sleep disorders are mostly really easy to diagnose, with fairly high accuracy, if one knows the basic information! The big problem is that most Doctors don’t even get to learn that.

I might not have been too fit, when I was reading, but, IF I understood correctly, he claimed that anyone with the basic knowledge of sleep disorders should, with a high degree of reliability, be able to ascertain if a person has a disorder, and should see a sleep specialist.
The way I understood it, all of us who read up on the disorders, are far more likely to make a correct diagnoses than an average Doctor. They only manage to refer 2% of patients that the sleep specialists see!!!!!
Sleep Apnoea causes such serious heart problems, that premature death is not only likely but to be expected. All undiagnosed EDS disorders, are potentially extremely dangerous. The sufferer is likely to have accidents and is a danger to himself and the environment.
We should therefore see it as our duty to help the people we come across.

Hope this is some help
:-)
Sleepy-head

PS. I recently discovered, that if we want to order books, we should try to go via the sleepnets link on their “shopping Page” which sends you to Amazon. It is a bit inconvenient, but apparently sleepnet then should get a % of the profit, and we all want them to be able to keep up the good service.

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