Young woman sleeping 20 hours a day

Joe Snooze wrote:The young woman is almost certainly suffering from depression.
She will need professional help, a psychiatrist if possible.

Please DO NOT advise people against getting the flu shot.

We have an epidemic of H1N1 this year that is killing middle age healthy people.

I don't want to alarm anyone but this is the worst I have ever seen. You don't expect a healthy 35 year old to catch the flu and in a week end up in the intensive care unit on a respirator with kidney failure only to die despite best efforts.

This year Get the Shot!

If we have already had H1N1, do we need the vaccine, or did that do the job for the future? I had it once, and I sure don't want it again. That was the worst thing I have ever had.

zoocrewphoto wrote: If we have already had H1N1, do we need the vaccine, or did that do the job for the future? I had it once, and I sure don't want it again. That was the worst thing I have ever had.

If you have had the H1N1 vaccine, you do not need it again. The other flu vaccine you should get yearly.

I have a disease known as Kleine-Levin Syndrome AKA Sleeping Beauty Syndrome. These "sleep episodes" come and go. I am one of 500-1000 people in the world with this disease, so her having this might be rare. My normal sleep episodes last 5-10 days with 14 days being my longest (but I know other people with KLS that sleep weeks to months, up to 15 months!!!) A typical KLS episode, a person will sleep 15-22 hours of the day, only waking to eat/drink and go to the bathroom. While awake, your eyes may be open, but not much is computing upstairs. I act like a drunk/autistic 5 year old in these episodes. I have NO control of it...and no memory. The time while I am in these episodes, the day I wake up out of them, my mind is still in that day before I fell asleep...everything in between is erased from my mind. I will eat stuff I normally HATE. I can barely do anything for myself. The episodes where I sleep 22 hours of the day are soooooo much better than the time awake, due to total confusion, hallucinations/fear, and the lack of being able to tell if you are dreaming/awake/alive/dead.
For more info, go to http://www.klsfoundation.org
Chances are small, but MOST doctors have NEVER even heard of this condition...took me 4 years before I was diagnosed...

mgaggie wrote:

zoocrewphoto wrote: If we have already had H1N1, do we need the vaccine, or did that do the job for the future? I had it once, and I sure don't want it again. That was the worst thing I have ever had.

If you have had the H1N1 vaccine, you do not need it again. The other flu vaccine you should get yearly.

I think that means I am okay on the H1N1, but let me clarify. I didn't have the vaccine. I had the flu! I was off work for 2 weeks and still sluggish for another 2 weeks after that. Bad fever, weird dreams that continued while awake. I can't remember ever been that sick before, not even as a kid.

The flu is sneaky; the virus is continually evolving. Some years we have the "named" strains, sometimes returns of strains long gone
--or at least we hoped they were gone. Each year, the flu experts use all the skill at their command to identify the worst ones
on the radar; then they try to arrange to produce vaccines to fight them. Some years, the virus get a head start,
some years the dark horses come in first. It is a puzzle and a race that's never over.
So the answer is yes, the flu virus is different each year, because the target is always different.
The vaccine cannot protect against every one of the hundreds of strains out there, but it aims for the most dangerous.

Lazer1234 wrote:The vaccine, Pandemrix containing adjuvant ASO3 caused more cases of narkolepsy than vaccines without. Indeed caused bacteria and viruses also narkolepsy, for those with a specific set of genes.
I also believe that bacteria and viruses can cause sleep disorders as well.
But that's another story.

Your risk of dying from the flu if you didn't take the vaccine was higher than your risk of getting narcolepsy if you took the vaccine, even if you believe the numbers and believe narcolepsy was linked to the vaccine.

Maybe you consider death preferable to narcolepsy.

People are dying right now from H1N1 flu. There are a lot of people on heart lung machines right now because H1N1 damaged their lungs trying to survive long enough to recover. We're at risk of running out of heart lung machines if there are more bad H1N1 cases.

zoocrewphoto wrote:If we have already had H1N1, do we need the vaccine, or did that do the job for the future? I had it once, and I sure don't want it again. That was the worst thing I have ever had.

"H1N1" isn't necessarily just one strain of the flu. "H1" means a particular version of Hemagglutinin. "N1" means a particular version of Neuraminidase. These are some of the molecular tools used by the virus. Many strains use the same versions of these genes, but have other differences.

How long ago did you have H1N1? 2009? I'm not sure if the 2013 H1N1 strain is the same as previous years strain, or if it's close enough that you'll still have a good immunity.

I've never had the flu, so this post isn't about that. Instead, this is about sleep patterns.

My AHI (as seen in one sleep study) was 49.6. Not the highest I've heard of, but certainly not as low as I've seen some on here. I've been dealing with this for well over 10 years (untreated), and have to say that any one person's symptoms will vary. I experience extreme fatigue and sleep A LOT. Other people with a similar AHI can experience much less severe symptoms. Mine were more severe than most. At times, I'd sleep anywhere from 12 to 20 hours per night (or day, depending on your perspective). That, of course, would vary. I haven't experienced a 20 hour night in a few years, but I can still sleep for 12+ hours on a regular basis. Just because most people with sleep apnea don't experience these symptoms, doesn't mean that it can't be sleep apnea causing them.

Granted, it could be caused by any number of things, but know that there are those of us out there with diagnosed sleep apnea that do.