She suffers from “severe hallucinations and hundreds of spiders crawling” on her bed if she struggles to stay awake
A British woman spent her life struggling to stay awake during the day, and her attempts failed to discover something shocking.
After years of excessive sleep, she was diagnosed. According to the Mayo Clinic, this woman suffers from idiopathic hypersomnia, a rare sleep disorder that causes the patient to feel “extremely sleepy during the day even after a full night of good sleep.” This often results in a struggle with waking up and feeling “unwell.” satisfaction” and “mental fog”.
Joanna Cox, 38, from Castleford in West Yorkshire, once slept for four days without waking due to idiopathic hypersomnia.
Cox has dubbed herself the “real-life sleeping beauty” because of the unusual disorder that causes her to sleep up to 22 hours a day.
The sleep disorder means Joanna “never feels well” and often sleeps between 18 and 22 hours a day.
Prior to her diagnosis, Joanna found herself sleeping in unusual places, including behind the wheel of a car. She once even skipped a holiday to Spain with her daughters Caitlin, 20, and Isabel, 18, and lives on protein shakes and takeaway meals because she’s “quick” in eating them before she goes to bed again.
She also suffers from “severe hallucinations” while struggling to stay awake and has recurring visions of “hundreds of spiders crawling” on her bed.
Joanna ended up in the hospital with low blood sugar, after spending four days sleeping without getting up to eat.
Although she does not know the cause of the condition she was diagnosed with in October 2021, she is desperate to find a doctor who can help her manage her symptoms.
According to what was reported by the newspaper “The Independent”, Joanna, who is currently unemployed, said: “This condition is really ruining my life. I am like the real-life Sleeping Beauty. I can’t wake up once I fall asleep, I can’t work, I can’t drive, I can never “Making any plans because I don’t know if I’m going to be awake. I wake up not knowing what day it is or how long I’ve been sleeping. It’s such a loner I’m in and I really want some help.”
Joanna began experiencing symptoms in 2017 when she noticed she was feeling very tired during the day. She owned her own cleaning company and struggled to get through the day without resting and eventually taking a nap.
Over the next few years, she went to the general practitioner in an attempt to relieve her stress.
She indicated that the doctors initially thought she was suffering from depression, so she was referred to a mental health specialist. But this hypothesis was ruled out because she had no signs other than fatigue.
She indicated that she underwent many examinations on suspicion of infection or multiple sclerosis and even cancer, but that “no one could diagnose my condition and it was getting worse with the passage of time. In the end, I had to leave my job in 2019.”
Interestingly, the only time she wakes up from excessive sleep is in the early morning, around 2am, which is when she is walking her two Cockapoos.
Joanna, who lives alone, said she would not be able to survive without the support of her daughters, who visit her regularly to check on her and take the dogs outside to walk her if she doesn’t wake up.