Source: Telegraph >> Read Full Article and Comment
Louisa Ball, 15, has earned the nickname ‘Sleeping Beauty’ thanks to a rare condition that causes her to sleep for up to two weeks at a time.
Miss Ball, from Worthing, has slept through school exams, dance competitions and entire family holidays thanks to her unusual condition.
Her prolonged sleeps, which began in 2008 as she recovered from flu, were initially thought to be hormonal until she was diagnosed with Kleine-Levin Syndrome last year.
People who develop the condition, also known as Sleeping Beauty Disease, are prone to falling into extended periods of deep sleep that can stretch to weeks.
Miss Ball’s mother Lottie, 45, told a national newspaper: “She was exhausted and didn’t seem to be getting any better. She started to fall asleep at school and was rambling about things that didn’t make sense – just like she was talking in her sleep.
“It really scared us, we didn’t know what to do. It just didn’t seem like Louisa was the daughter we used to know – she was like a different person.”
Doctors at Worthing General Hospital were baffled by her symptoms, and suggested the problem could be to do with hormones.
Miss Ball’s sleeping episodes began to stretch to ten days at a time, during which time her parents would wake her once a day to feed her and take her to the bathroom, before she succumbed to sleep again.
They said that when woken up she would ramble as though she were sleep talking, and when she fully awoke after several days she would not remember anything that had happened… Continue Reading
