Sleep is for the Weak. Yes. Someone knew what they were saying when they developed that title for a book.
For 6 years, we didn’t sleep. I mean…Didn’t. Sleep. That’s part of the unofficial, official symptoms of Landau-Kleffner Syndrome (epilepsy). For us, it means putting J to sleep for 2 hours, he wakes, tosses and turns, flaps and stimms, laughingly screams at the top of his lungs or attempts to place his foot through the wall in a not so delicate manner. For 5 or more hours. Or he sleeps for 4 hours and then is up for another 7 – or another 24 hours, depending upon some unknown set of rules. It also means he falls asleep at school within 20 minutes of getting there, needing us to retrieve him after an hour of coma-like sleep.
The diagnosis of LKS gave us some reprieve. We had a definition. We had a treatment plan. It finally made sense of what we couldn’t make sense of. We began medication. Sleep eventually got better. Then, it’s stops. Again.
Yet, this little man, who has been sleep-deprived most of his life, still goes strong. He still attempts to attend to all he should; he attempts to keep his impulses under control, to communicate the best way he can; to be happy. He’s the strongest I’ve seen.
Yep, he knows sleep is for the weak. But me? I’d still like some please.
How does sleep affect your household?
(Phtoto By: Crafting with Cat Hair / Flickr) <=Don’t ask, I don’t know either