Can you imagine lying down to take a nap, and when you wake up two months have passed? It sounds like a nightmare for most, but for one 15-year-old British girl, it’s a real life occurrence.
Stacey Comerford has Kleine-Levin Syndrome, or Sleeping Beauty Syndrome – a condition in which people have “episodes” where they sleep for as long as 20 hours a day for periods of time, according to the Nation Institute of Health. Comerford’s last episode lasted two whole months.
“There’s never any warning. I’ve even found her fast asleep on the kitchen floor. When she’s in an episode, she might get up to go to the toilet or get a drink but she’s not awake. I call it sleep mode,” Comerford’s mother, Bernie, told The Sun, adding that she often feeds her when she’s in this ‘sleep mode’. “When she wakes, she thinks it’s the following day. She doesn’t have any memory of it.”
“When she’s in sleep mode she can be quite moody but she can’t help it,” her mother told the Daily Mail. “She’s like a toddler who wants to do things her own way. She stamps her foot if she doesn’t get what she wants. It’s like having two different kids in the house.”
There is no treatment for Kleine-Levin Syndrome, which according to Standford University’s Center for Narcolepsy is a rare type of sleep disorder that usually affects teenagers. In fact, she’s just one of 1,000 people worldwide who suffer from the disorder. Once teens reach adulthood, however, the symptoms typically stop. The cause of the condition is not known, but some scientists point to an autoimmune disease as a suspect.
You usually don’t hear many people complaining about getting too much sleep, but in this case, I think it’s warranted!
