Question: I\u2019m a 17 year old girl with a sleep problem that has been interfering with my life. Could I have narcolepsy?<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been missing school a lot because I\u2019m always tired. No matter how much sleep I get, I\u2019m always, constantly tired. Over the summer, I need about 12 hours of sleep a night to wake up naturally (which bothers me also). But now, some days when I get home from school, I go to sleep at 4:00 in the afternoon and don\u2019t wake up until 6:00 the next morning.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve seen a doctor, but he said it was all in my head. I don\u2019t think it is. I don\u2019t know what\u2019s wrong with me. I feel so tired and weak all the time.<\/p>\n
On three separate occasions, I passed up shopping (that\u2019s a big deal for me) to sleep on those weekends. I have no life because I need to spend all my free time sleeping! That\u2019s not normal to me, and I don\u2019t think its all in my head!<\/p>\n
Worst, I think I\u2019m starting to lose touch with reality. It\u2019s getting harder to tell the difference between real events and dreams. Two weeks ago, after my mom struggled to get me out of bed, I was riding in her car past Win-Dixie, heading towards Subway, when I thought I saw the Effiel Tower straight ahead of us. It took me a couple of minutes to actually convince myself that the Eiffel Tower was in Paris, that we were not in Paris, that my small town in Southern Virginia did not have an Eiffel Tower, and that I was imagining it. This past week, I\u2019ve been getting less and less sleep until this morning I could, literally, not move.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve seen some other young people post about similar problems on here, but no one seems to have a solution. What\u2019s wrong with me?!?!<\/p>\n
— Natalie, Age 17, Single, Female, Martinsville, VA, USA<\/p>\n
For the Dream Doctor’s response, click<\/span> here<\/a>
Back to<\/span> Narcolepsy page<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","categories":[3224,3250],"class_list":["post-36483","articles","type-articles","status-publish","hentry","category-better-sleep-question","category-narcolepsy-diagnosis"],"acf":{"article_id":"1508"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damwebserver.com\/dreamdoctor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles\/36483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damwebserver.com\/dreamdoctor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damwebserver.com\/dreamdoctor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/articles"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damwebserver.com\/dreamdoctor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damwebserver.com\/dreamdoctor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}