A painful message from a young Saudi man with a rare disease: I am preparing to die

In sad and painful terms, a young Saudi man, no more than 21 years old, addressed his fans and followers on the Twitter platform: “Unfortunately, after my suspicions of having (fatal familial insomnia) syndrome, one of the rarest diseases in the world, but thanks to God, I am in the first stage of the syndrome, which consists of 4 stages, and ends with With death, through 7-42 months the syndrome will last, pray for me to recover, perhaps one of you is closer to God than me.”

Al-Arabiya.net contacted the Saudi young man, Walid Al-Tamimi, who spoke about his illness by saying: “Insomnia is a very common disease that is different from fatal insomnia. The syndrome is hereditary, and its genes are found in 40 families in the world only, and thankfully, these families do not exist in the Middle East, and my injury was It is the first of its kind, as the first to suffer from the syndrome in a non-genetic way and as the youngest to suffer from it.”

My illness ends in death

He added, “The syndrome lasts 7-42 months, consisting of 4 stages, the first: the inability to sleep partially and lasts for five months, the second: hallucinations, fear and panic, lasting for two years and 4 months, and the third stage: the inability to sleep at all, and it lasts for 6 months.” And the last and advanced stage is memory loss and some brain systems stop working, and it lasts for five months, which ends with death.”

He stated that the doctors informed him after there was a cure for the syndrome, and everyone who contracted it completed all the stages of the disease, and he said: “There were suspicions 5 years ago that I had the syndrome, and I tested positive for 5 days, and I did not inform my mother of my illness, but I told her that my illness needed to travel.” To Switzerland for treatment, a simple disease.

I will stay without seeing my mom

He also said, “With regret and sadness… from next February, until my last days, I will not be able to see the greatest person and the most beloved to my heart (my mother), because she will not be able to travel due to her health condition, and after about a year I will begin to forget 70 percent of my memory, and my mind will stop some of its tasks, And for the last 3 years of my life I will be crazy in the farthest corners of the world.

Regarding his family’s acceptance of the news of his illness, Al-Tamimi explained, naturally, the news struck my father and brother like a thunderbolt, because they are the only ones who knew the nature of my disease, adding, “The doctors explained to my father the nature of my illness and the stages I would go through, which caused my father to suffer shock and enter a coma, for a whole day. Because he did not accept the news, and for that, I chose to stay in a hospital for the rest of my life, and stipulated that my father take me to the hospital and return to Saudi Arabia after a week.”

This is my destiny

He continued, “In the first two days of my acquaintance, it was normal, but then the situation became different. I will go to Zurich in order to protect my family from my behavior, because the disease causes paranoia and hallucinations, and because there is more than one hospital that deals with the owners of fatal family insomnia.”

While he continued, “The dream of my life is to live with my family, even my father wants me to stay with them, but the disease and after a year will start to make me do things that may harm them, and at the last stage of the disease for 6 months, I will not be able to speak, think or move, and after that death, so I wanted to avoid them watching these stages I would go through.”

Who is Walid Al-Tamimi?

The young man “Walid Al-Tamimi” is studying in the last year at King Abdulaziz University, College of Technology and Information, specializing in software, and as he put it, “It is paradoxical in my life that a while ago I was in Zurich with a voluntary work, and today I will return to it to end my life with it.”

And he concluded his speech: “I believe in God’s decree and destiny, and I ask everyone to pray for me, as I am from a religious family, and I was raised that every person has his life and his reality and what happens to him is written before he was created.”

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