Has something ever happened to you and at first no matter how you looked at it your situation seemed pretty crappy but in the ended it ended up being a blessing in disguise?
In December 2007 I had a pretty bad car accident after falling asleep at the wheel. Not only did I get 2 tickets, I had to go to court for the first time, I ended up paying about $500 for those 2 tickets, I lost my license and had to have 2 sleep tests done.
The first sleep tests I had done was for sleep apnea...turned out that I didn't have that but they wanted me to go back to have the narcolepsy sleep test done. After having the sleep apnea test done I filled out all the papers the Secretary of State had sent me in order to get my license back and sent in the sleep test reports saying I didn't have sleep apnea. A few weeks later I received a letter saying that they would not be giving my license back and it was beyond suspended it was just out right canceled pretty much. They gave me a chance to submit a bunch of other paper work to have my case go back through for a review by a board of doctors. Unfortunately due to some financial issues I was unable to get everything turned in on time. (You wouldn't even be able to guess how much a sleep test costs and then the write up is a totally separate bill which also costs an arm and a leg!)
In March of 2008 I had the narcolepsy test done. Turns out I have a pretty severe case of narcolepsy with a slight case of cataplexy...for those of you who don't know what any of this means narcolepsy is a sleep disorder in which you suffer from severe daytime sleepiness and sleep attacks. Cataplexy is a symptom of the narcolepsy and it causes you to loose your muscle control mostly while experiencing a strong emotion such as laughter or anger. After finding out I did have narcolepsy I started to see a couple of doctors. The first of which was just a regular family doctor no specializations. He unfortunately couldn't help me so I started seeing a neurologist.
Since I started seeing my second neurologist I've been taking Ritalin which helps a great deal with lessening the number of sleep attacks and significantly reducing the daytime sleepiness.
All of this ended up costing me a good amount of money for all the medicines and the guess and check process to see which medicine actually worked, the office visits, the sleep tests, the write ups, and of course gas money to get to and from the doctors because when there is something wrong with you they can't put a specialist in the same town they have to put him like an hour away!
Now that I've told you most of the bad things I'll let you in on a little secret. When I had my accident I was so upset I had totalled my first car after having it for only 2 months, it cost a ton of money and I lost my license. But after really thinking about it that accident was really good and it could have ended up saving my life or the lives of other people. You see when I had my accident there where 4 cars involved including mine. 2 of them where totalled and the other 2 had some minor damage. Amazingly nobody was hurt not even a slight scratch on any of the guys I hit. This might not seem like a big deal but if you had seen the first car I hit you would know that nobody being hurt was a miracle! Even the cop that showed up at the scene first said that somebody should have been hurt. To top it all off I wasn't even wearing my seat belt...I know that is bad and trust me I've learned my lesson I had to go to court for the no seat belt ticket and it ended up costing me like $200 for just that ticket. Lets just say from then on I never forget to put my safety belt on.
I also think that accident was good because it forced me to have the sleep tests done. For a long time I thought there was something wrong with the amount I was sleeping but nobody really believed me. Most people just shrugged it off and thought I was a lazy person. That bothered me but even more than that my sleeping was interfering with other parts of my life. People didn't like to hangout with me as much because I fell asleep doing just about everything. I couldn't drive myself anywhere and it was affecting my grades. I almost failed the same math class twice and if you know me you would know math was my best subject.
Having narcolepsy I go through the sleep stages different that most people. I hit my REM stage right away and wake up straight from that so its a lot easier for me to remember my dreams. Most people who can some what remember their dreams would agree that usually they dream about something they were thinking about before they went to bed. Now for me it works the same way most of the time, usually I dream about what I was doing or thinking about before I went to bed. Sounds normal right? Wrong! Because my sleep stages are different and I remember my dreams in hard core detail its as if I think while I'm asleep. I'll give you an example just in case you think I'm crazy!
My mom and I were working on starting a business in which we created flyers and did all the layouts and such. Well the first flyer I did I dreamed it! I saw the entire thing layed out in my sleep so when I woke up I was able to go and create it and it turned out great!
I'm always coming up with things to do and different ways to get things done more effectively in my sleep. I know it sounds really strange my mom even thinks it sounds kind of weird but I promise that's how it works for me.
So I guess in the end my narcolepsy while being a huge burden to my everyday life was almost like a blessing.....a blessing in disguise if you will!
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