Blinded by Delight · 7:18am Oct 19th, 2023
My brain diagnosis ended up way funnier than "We'll name it after you". It turned out to be "We know this is theoretically possible because there was a recorded case of it happening once in 2003". It turns out that if you have bipolar disorder and ADHD and PTSD and a traumatic brain injury, you get sick in a way that should only be possible for people who have no eyes.
So after twelve years, I've got a diagnosis and I'm now pretty sure it's a form of this . Which Wikipedia emphasises is only meant to happen to the totally blind - even people with any ability to recognize light at all don't tend to get it. Just, I don't just have to deal with the consequences of no cycle because of the ADHD-bipolar additions to it. Right now I've been having a mixed episode, so I haven't been able to have a waking day shorter than 30 hours in about five weeks. So now I know why my sleep pattern looks like this even in a best case scenario:
So that's been fun. I'm mostly sharing because I think it's really funny, because I learned the field of chronobiology coming out of this, and because it's a cool Wikipedia page.
Good gracious.
...What can you even do?
I should hope they didn't just diagnose you and then wish you luck.
Life isn't fair, it just is what it is. I hope you find a way getting better or coping with it.
Best of luck and health.
Yay for over-achieving?
5751241
Considering it's only happened twice in their records... well, I'd hope they would check what if anything worked last time.
👀is that a 19 hour powernap i spot there?
Holy shit, lol. Feel better, assuming that's medically possible with the available treatments?
5751266
Any sleep, not continuous sleep.
As someone who doesn’t sleep ‘correctly’, even a 5min nap in an hour counts for these.
Also, congrats on an answer!
^^
That's rough
Though looking at the Wikipedia page, it does in fact state that this can happen with sighted people, so there might be hope for treatments.
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No treatment, no effective symptom management, I've been like this since I was sixteen so that's plenty of time to get used to it though. Mostly it just means I can't hold a 9-5.
Honestly though it's been really helpful to learn; I haven't been able to get a full disability pension until I could prove it was impossible for me to get better, and now I can.
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Imagine how much worse this would be if I was really competitive and learned I came in second.
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*Giggles* Very true! Thank goodness for small blessings I suppose. Still nice to see you on my feed again. n_n
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No, I sleep 19 consecutive hours fairly regularly. My record is 40, I think I've hit that twice but both times involved two or three drink and bathroom breaks.
5751302
Looking at it from the other side, here. Wanna swap for a day? lol
Still, congrats on a dx, they are life-changing even without treatment changes!
Wow.
Well at least you know what it is now, and can get some financial aid, if not a treatment!
5751302
Holy shit.
That's not sleeping, that's hibernation.
Geez, and I thought my body hated me.
Realize there's not much to be done, but you definitely have my sympathy and I wish you the very best of luck.
...we live in a society
There's a mood disorder caused by not being exposed to daylight, in which one gets out of sync with the daylight cycle and gets sleepy or depressed. Doctors tried curing it with artificial light, and failed. One of Eliezer Yudkowsky's girlfriends had it, and Eliezer, being not stupid, calculated how many light bulbs you'd need to use to receive as many watts of light as you would from the sun, and it turned out to be something like 100 times as much as the doctors had tried, and it worked.
So... maybe you can affect this either by being outdoors all day, or by using lots (like 50 per room) of really bright indoor LED lights of the right spectrum, at the right times.
Sorry, I don't recall any more details to help you google it.
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Nah, light therapy is a known thing and it's legit advice, but I've literally tried doing things like sleeping outside in direct sunlight for periods to try and force this, and it just won't - I don't even sleep worse. Which this kind of explains for me - if I have something that's only expected in the totally blind, then it makes sense the problem is that whatever translates light regulation to circadian cycle is broken.
I suppose it's a positive to actually have a name for the thing, so I'm glad you've actually got a diagnosis. Here's hoping all the help you need/want can come from that.