Chapter Two: Childhood

All my life I'd been kind of a weirdo when it came to sleeping.

The most obscure thing was definitely the sleepwalking. For years my parents told hilarious stories about me pretending to drive the lawnmower through the living room, or getting 'lost' in my closet and screaming for help because I'd slept walked into it and couldn't find my way back out.

Strangely, even this was not the most peculiar thing in the world—not in my family. My father was a sleepwalker and his mother had the same stories about him. It was just a part of who we were.

My parents identified some triggers early on; particularly stress, staying up late, or sleeping in a different bed.

One particular incident sticks out to me: I was in third or fourth grade and sleeping over at a friend's house. My parents had forgotten to warn my friend's mom about my 'habit.'  In the middle of the night, her mom awoke to find me, inches from her face, watching her sleep.

Sometimes I become aware of my sleepwalking while I am doing it, typically after experiencing an emotion like frustration or fear that woke me enough to realize I was dreaming. When this happened I usually have a better memory of what I've done during the night, and sometimes could simply go back to bed without help.

Early on, I simply shouted for help until someone came to get me.

This happened once while on a camping trip—when I became panicked and started screaming for help at the fear of being suffocated. I was shouting that my cousin was sitting on my head and wouldn't get off. My dad heard me, and 'saved' me...in actuality my cousin was peacefully sleeping nearby and I'd gotten turned around in my sleeping bag and couldn't get out...

As it continued, I developed a few of my own coping mechanisms, many of which my dad taught me based on his experiences.

My favorite technique was to find a wall and feel around at about the height I knew I could find a light switch. The light would wake me up the rest of the way—replacing the dream world around me with the reality. Even this, wasn't 100% effective...

One night I was having a dream that I was touring an old, haunted house. In the dream I'd become separated from my family, wandered down a hallway, and gotten trapped. I tried continuing forward, going left, then right, but each time it was a dead end. I felt for the light switch but found none. In my dreamlike state, I couldn't reason enough to simply turn around and go back the way I'd come.

Trapped, alone, and in a haunted house, I became frustrated and panicked. Finally, as I bordered on hysterical tears, I sat down on the middle of the hallway floor and began screaming for help. I wasn't just trapped in a haunted house, I felt trapped in my sleep, my mind, even my body was a prison.

After what felt like an eternity, my parents heard me and rushed to my room—frantic themselves. At the very moment they switched on the light, I woke up, embarrassed as the fog of a dream dissipated and reality jumped back into place.

That reality was that I'd wandered into my walk-in closet. Unable to reason well enough to turn around and go back out the door, and unable to find a light switch because the closet had an overhead pull chain, I finally just sat down and began shouting for help. Shouting for help often became my go-to in situations like this.

In a sleepwalking state, I am only able to reason to a certain extent, especially if the world I am 'seeing' is a dream world. I compare it to the way 'baby proofing' locks work. Like a toddler, I know that I have to twist the knob on the door to get outside, but if something unexpected gets in my way (like the child proof door knob) I can't reason enough to open the door, even if it's something I can do when I'm awake. The frustration will wake me up enough to realize what I am doing, and I can go back to bed.

Unfortunately, the more I do something while awake, the more likely I am to do it while asleep, without reaching frustration. My parents had a legitimate fear that eventually I would figure out how to undo the locked door on our camper, and leave one night. I was old enough to realize that this fear was very legitimate, so I made a point to never unlock the door while I was awake, asking my little sister or a parent to do it so I wouldn't become 'too good' at it.

Eventually, my mom discovered that a Tylenol before bed took the edge off just enough to prevent the walking. Naturally, she didn't want to give this to me every night, so she would attempt to 'anticipate' the walking: giving me a Tylenol before a camping trip or sleepover where I could potentially wander away and get hurt.

On a side note, sleepwalking isn't actually a direct symptom of narcolepsy! Many PWNs experience it, but it's not truly an 'official' symptom. It's believed to be more common for PWN because of the brain's inability to differentiate between being awake and asleep. I chose to mention it because later in life the sleepwalking would be a big push for me to visit the doctor.

Besides the sleepwalking, I regularly talked in my sleep and was very active in the bed, sleeping in strange positions or moving around all night. For the most part none of this bothered me, especially because I almost always slept like a rock and only remembered sleepwalking if I woke up in the middle of it.

The most disturbing for me was the vivid dreams.

I regularly had dreams so real, that I constantly confused them with memories; especially as a child. To this day, I have a memory of dancing in a large, dark restaurant, with my aunt, and a chef in a tall white hat. No one else in my entire family shares this memory and they are convinced that it was a dream I must've had as a child. We'll probably never know the truth.

It was also common for me to get into 'dream arguments' with my sister and wake up still upset, convinced that the argument had really happened, and ready to finish it.  More than once I was accused of 'starting trouble' with my sister.

Not all of the dreams were so mild; they often involved things that terrified me. These vivid dreams often panicked me and I woke up, frantic.

I'll never forget the first time I experienced what I later realized was sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis is defined by the National Sleep Foundation as, "a temporary inability to move during sleep-wake transitions. Sleep paralysis may last for a few seconds to several minutes and may accompany hypnagogic hallucinations." (A/N: Hpynagogic hallucination occur when falling asleep, hypnopompic occur when waking. I will discuss these further in a later chapter.)

True to the definition, my first experience came to me in the moments I was falling asleep.

One night, when I was around seven and teetering in the brink of sleep, I suddenly panicked because I was unable to remember what our kitchen looked like. I'm still a little unsure why this caused so much panic in my seven-year-old mind, but I gasped frantically, jerked from the edges of sleep by adrenaline, and jumped out of bed to run into the kitchen.

Except....that's not what happened.

I never jumped out of bed and ran anywhere. I was completely and totally frozen in my bed. My heart beat wildly, my breath quickened, and the panic increased in an instant but I just couldn't move. While it felt like it lasted for hours, it was closer to just moments. My mind had become a prisoner to my body.

Finally, I was released and able to jump out of bed and run out of my room. At my wild expression, my parents questioned me, but I was old enough to realize that what had just happened was abnormal, and made up an excuse instead, peeking in the kitchen to reassure myself. I returned to bed and slept soundly for the rest of the night.

Everyone (yes, even you) experiences sleep paralysis every night: it's the body's way of keeping you safe while you dream, keeping you from acting out your dreams. For 'normal' people, they just  Many people will even experience it in the same way I did: being awake but still paralyzed. In PWN, it is thought that their brains can't tell the difference between being awake and asleep, resulting in regular conscious paralysis experiences. While this was the only memorable one I had during  my childhood, many, many, more were on their way.

It may be hard to believe, but for the most part though, my childhood was relatively normal. These strange events were in many ways a part of my family's 'norm' and since the events were spread out over many years, or I because I didn't always tell my parents about things like the paralysis, the path to diagnosis wouldn't truly begin until my father's first visit to the man who would later become my sleep doctor, Dr. Cevallos.