Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Fatal Insomnia--NOT MINE

Thank you, Great One, for bread and the capacity to sleep at least enough to carry on. This morning when I got to work The Good Doctor had more for me to add to his syllabus on sleep disorders, which included insomnia. Today he asked me to prepare his detailed outline on insomnia. Sleep last night was fine. Round of applause. Thank you.

Particularly after reading and putting together the outline, I see that my insomnia (or just plain dread sleeplessness) is probably just psycho-emotional twerks that I can control with some mind-over-matter efforts, which I had been doing for the past couple of years except for an occasional flap. This is to say that, for example, I do not suffer from neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease or Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, which I now know might cause insomnia. Nor do I suffer from headache syndromes, such as hypnic headaches or exploding head syndrome, which are part of neurological disorders.

Thanks for that to whoever is in charge of the doling.

Neither do I have
Fatal Familial Insomnia, a rare prion disease. A prion disease, as I learned upon a little research, is as follows:

"Human prion diseases: Diseases of human and animals that affect primarily the nervous system. They can be sporadic (spontaneous), transmitted by infection or familial (inherited). The hallmark of these diseases is the presence of microscopic vacuolization of the brain tissue, called spongiform degeneration, and of an abnormal form of a protein, called prion protein, which is a normal component in brain and other tissues. The abnormal prion protein is resistant to digestion with enzymes that breakdown normal proteins, and accumulates in the brain."

Should you choose not to visit the link to a description of Fatal Familial Syndrome, a few fun facts on the stages of the disease are as follows:

The first stage develops over approximately four months and includes a collection of psychiatric problems such as panic attacks and bizarre phobias. The second stage includes hallucinations, panic, agitation and sweating and lasts about five months. The third stage lasts about three months and is total insomnia with weight loss. The individual at this point looks much older and may experience incontinence. The fourth stage is around six months long and is recognized as dementia, total insomnia and sudden death after becoming mute.

Apparently it doesn’t set in until a person’s in his or her late 40s, or after child-bearing age. Check your family history. Me, I am immaculate. I have no history. So it's cool.

2 Comments:

Blogger glomgold said...

This sounds kind of like the malicious violent older brother of Mad Cow Disease.

10:15 AM  
Blogger Mr Anigans said...

i have a phobia of my fly being down. strangely though, i have no qualms with exposing myself at all.

8:42 PM  

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