BY Claire Littlefield, Shaker Jr. H S, North Colonie

     Nancy Tofudoga was a chicken farmer from Kalamazoo who was very dedicated to her job. She treated each of her chickens with the same love and respect she would give her own family members; in fact, Nancy even gave each of the fowl in question the name of a family member. She didn’t kill or cage the chickens. They got to live out the extent of their lives happily and without strife or abuse. Nancy honestly loved every part of the chickens. As you can see, she was very passionate about her job.

     Needless to say she would never let anything get between her and her profession, so when she started to get extremely drowsy on the job, she was very worried. Nancy had never been sleepy while she took care of the chickens because she was so excited when she worked. The sleepiness was odd, as well. It seemed to plague her on and off all throughout the day. She would go to bed and get a good nine hours of sleep, wake up and be rested. Then, she would go out and mingle with her chickens. Strangely in a few hours she would feel tired, extremely tired. She felt as though she had not slept for days. She would then fall into the unavoidable grasp of deep sleep. Nancy would wake up from this deep, trancelike sleep within thirty minutes; emerging completely refreshed.

     Stranger was the fact that she seemed to lose strength in her muscles when she had a laughing fit. Considering how often she laughed at the crazy antics of those chickens, she experienced the weakening of her muscles quite often.

     After she had been experiencing these odd occurrences for about a month, she decided to investigate. Hours of research later led Nancy to determine that she could possibly have narcolepsy. The on and off drowsiness and the loss of strength in her muscles were primary characteristics of this disability. She also learned that the name for this weakening of muscle was called a cataplectic attack. At that point, she realized that there were many other characteristics of the disability that she had not even associated with her sleep problems. Two of these characteristics were hallucinations and having an almost paralyzed state of sleep. She had recently been having hallucinations based on the fowl that she had devoted her life to. The near paralyzed state of sleep explained why she could no longer be woken up by the loving nudges of her chickens.

     She soon decided that she should go to the local doctor to see if she was correct in her assumption that she had narcolepsy. After going to Dr. McTwitters, a local neurologist, she was not too surprised when the he told her she had narcolepsy.

     She was pleased to find out that there were drugs to alleviate the symptoms of narcolepsy and that it was not fatal. Nancy also realized that as long as she understood and respected the symptoms of narcolepsy she could live a relatively normal life. She went back to her farm and sat down, happy to see one of her chickens, Auntie Sue, trudging over to see her. Nancy Tofudoga was content knowing that she had a disability and that she could live with it.

NOTE: Nancy Tofudoga is not a real person. Her story is meant to illustrate what it could be like living with narcolepsy.

Home	Current Issue	Past Issues	About Us	Contact Info