In case you haven't heard...

...the big news of the week is that I have NARCOLEPSY.

Ahaha. Fo reals.

SO if you recall I went to the hospital a few weeks ago to be studied while I slept. Well fast forward to the appointment following my 20 hours worth of sleep tests. It was basically the funniest thing ever. As I was waiting in the room for the doctor to come see me to give me my diagnosis (at this point I was just praying they weren't going to say "Oh sorry, you just spent $900 on a test and we found nothing wrong with you"), I was reading my book, (which I was really enjoying btw), and I couldn't help but fall asleep. (In narco speech they're called sleep "attacks" bc it is next to impossible to predict or prevent.) Anyway so as I was taking my little narcoleptic snooze, the doctor walks in and I jolted awake and she asked, "Oh sorry did I wake you up?" as if it was the most normal thing in the world for someone to fall asleep in 5 minutes sitting up in a hard plastic chair.

Anyway, she proceeded to tell me that after looking at my brain scans from my sleep study, they discovered that I have very abnormal sleep patterns consistent with narcolepsy. Add that to my lengthy history of falling asleep in class (middle school, high school, and college), falling asleep at work, always needing naps...and it adds up to narcolepsy. It's obviously not as extreme as the movies portray...like I really only fall asleep after sitting for longer than 20-30 minutes or so, and it depends on how badly I slept the night before. Anyway, the point is...it sucks and there's no cure, but it's treatable. There's some medicine I'm going to start soon that should help me sleep better at night. And there's a stimulant drug that I'll probably also start that will help me stay awake during the day. At least...in theory it's supposed to help anyway haha.

So I guess there's like a narcolepsy support group... ahahaha. I'm probably going to join so I can get their emails about the latest research. Kinda stinks because not a lot is known about narcolepsy and they don't really know what causes it. I'm supposed to develop the weirdest symptoms as I get older, so I need all the info I can get haha.

In light of the Thanksgiving season and my newly discovered disorder, I thought this cartoon to be oh-so-appropriate:

Also it's made realize I need to be careful how much turkey I eat before I drive home this Thanksgiving :D