Sleep is something that everyone needs a healthy amount of. Parents of young children probably treasure sleep more than anyone else does. Teens tend to sleep a lot, but not as much as a seventeen year old in Pennsylvania. She has been diagnosed with “Sleeping Beauty Syndrome”.
Disney made the story of “Sleeping Beauty” well known to many of us when we were children. An angry fairy places a curse on Princess Aurora while she is still a baby.
Nothing bad happens until the Princess becomes a teenager. She pricks her finger on a spindle, and this triggers the curse to take effect. She falls asleep, and is expected to remain asleep for 100 years. Eventually, a Prince comes by and is able to wake her up. The Disney story, of course, has a “Happily Ever After” type of ending.
Believe it or not, “Sleeping Beauty Syndrome” actually exists. The real name of the disorder is Klein-Levin Syndrome. A seventeen year old named Nicole Delien, who lives in Pennsylvania, has it.
Her mother says that Nicole sleeps for 18 or 19 hours a day, and then wakes up to eat. But, she doesn’t really wake up all the way. Instead, she eats while in a sleepwalking state. She doesn’t remember doing it. Her longest sleeping episode was a total of 64 days. She slept from Thanksgiving into January.
Klein-Levin Syndrome is extremely rare. It is a neurological disorder that is characterized by excessive amounts of sleep and altered behavior. People sleep for most of the day and night. They wake in a sleepwalking type of state in order to eat or go to the bathroom. The syndrome is typically diagnosed when a person is a teenager.
Other symptoms include changes in the teen’s demeanor. They appear lethargic, apathetic, and disoriented. They regress into a childlike state. Some will have food cravings or be hypersensitive to light and noise while they are in their sleepwalking state. Episodes are cyclical, and can last for days, weeks, or even months.
In between episodes, the person will appear to be in normal health, and this makes it harder to diagnose. It can take about four years for a diagnosis to be determined. There is no known cause of Klein-Levin Syndrome. Nicole takes medication that is believed to spread out the sleeping episodes for a longer span of time, giving her more opportunity to be awake and aware. There is no cure.
Image by Melanie Hughes on Flickr