15-year-old Louisa Ball is a real life "sleeping beauty" - when
she takes a nap, she can sleep for days at a time. Her longest
sleeping episode to date lasted 13 days.
However, her life is no fairy tale. During her sleeping
episodes, her parents, Richard and Lottie Ball, have to force her
awake to make her go to the bathroom, and force-feed her in order
to keep her alive.
In an interview with NBC News, Lottie says that her daughter's
first bout of extended sleeping happened after she experienced
flu-like symptoms in 2008. "We couldn't wake her up. . . She
couldn't have the energy to just open her eyelids," she said.
The British teenager reportedly suffers from a strange medical
condition called Kleine-Levin Syndrome (KLS), otherwise known as
"Sleeping Beauty Syndrome". This rare neurological disorder strikes
teenagers and causes sufferers to fall into extended episodes of
sleep or altered behavior. They may wake briefly, but they will be
disoriented, confused or apathetic. In between episodes, sufferers
are able to live and function normally.
Because of her illness, Louisa has had to miss school, social
activities and dance recitals. The teenager experiences an episode
every four to five weeks, and each episode is often preceded by
noticeable changes in her behavior.. Friends and family now
recognize the warning signs - she becomes very quiet and she may be
irritable.
Dr. Emmanuel Mignot, psychiatry professor and director of the
Center for Narcolepsy at Stanford University, told TODAY that
Kleine-Levin Syndrome may be triggered off by a viral infection
that affects a teenager's sleep center and stays in the body for
years. This infection does not clear up, but regularly relapses,
causing the patient to sleep for days at a time.
However, he clarified that "Sleeping Beauty Syndrome" is not the
same as narcolepsy - a chronic sleep disorder characterized by
excessive daytime sleepiness.
"Narcolepsy patients. . . just sleep all the time, and they
have difficulty staying awake. It's a lifetime disorder. Once you
have narcolepsy, you have it for life, whereas (in Kleine-Levin
Syndrome), it's episodic. It's on, off, on, off. And that's what's
really dramatic," says Dr Mignot.
The dramatic condition is so uncommon that there may be less
than 1,000 victims worldwide. Doctors still don't know what causes
Sleeping Beauty Syndrome or how it can be cured. However, most
patients do grow out it - the condition seems to go away by itself
after eight to 12 years, often when the sufferer is in his
twenties.
Hopefully, Louisa's "fairy tale" will have a happy ending.