Posted by zeugma on July 17, 2004, at 16:05:29
In reply to Re: Not finished yet... » SLS, posted by Dinah on July 17, 2004, at 10:44:43
Well, it's sort of a silly story, involving the (too my untrained eye) egos of different schools of medicine. I get what I call "involuntary naps" or "forgetting sleeps" when I'm upset - *only* when I'm upset. Sometimes just five or fifteen minutes, sometimes hours, but I *have* to take them. I do manage to get somewhere safe. My car (not driving), a stairwell, or all the way home. I happened to mention them to my migraine neurologist because one was averted by a tryptan, and she referred me to the sleep neurologist. Since I really respected her, I went. Based on that and the fact that when I'm really tired I hear background chatter as I fall to sleep (no words, just background stuff like in a restaurant) and the fact that I had sleep paralysis while on a short trial of Neurontin, and probably also an astonishing prevalence of sleep disorders on my mother's side of the family, he said that clinically I presented as narcolepsy, never mind that I didn't have any of the other symptoms. So he scheduled a sleep lab. My therapist and I think that it's just dissociation, sleep as an escape. But the neurologist said that therapists don't know anything about narcolepsy, and *all* of my dissociative symptoms were probably expressions of narcolepsy. So he had some ego involved, I think, in getting a certain result from the sleep study. That being said, I do have trouble with extreme daytime sleepiness sometimes, and I'm not really aware of being depressed.>
Hi, my knowledge of most things neurological/psychotropic is very limited, but I do know that cataplexy is sensitive to emotional triggers. That is narcolepsy. And the background chatter and sleep paralysis- we are unlucky to live in an era when psychologists and neurologists still fight over the mind, but it sounds like narcolepsy to me. The Provigil won't block the cataplexy, but it might make you feel better. It's worth a chance. I take 50 mg for ADHD and 'dissociative disorder NOS'.
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poster:zeugma
thread:366935
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040714/msgs/367189.html