Ramblings of a
Liberal Hypersomniac

The below explanation was taken from this website: Narcolepsy - What is it?

I hope that reading this will help you slightly understand what it is like to live with Excessive Daytime Sleepiness.

Explaining Excessive Daytime Sleepiness

It is very difficult for the normal person to accept excessive daytime
sleepiness as being out of the patient's control. The unaffected see
the patient's sleepiness as an insult, a rejection, or evidence of a
lack of interest. Family members equate the patient's pathological
sleepiness with their normal experience of sleepiness and assume that
the patient could "fight it off" if he or she really wanted to. The
spouse and family members must clearly understand that this symptom is
totally outside the control of the patient's volition or willpower.
This point must be made with great firmness. Even family members with a
rudimentary understanding of the disorder often conclude that the
patient "just isn't trying hard enough".

Further to confuse
the situation, the patient with narcolepsy may be capable of staying
awake and alert, and may even become animated, during occasional,
unique and/or stimulating circumstances. Family members, who see the
patient responding with animation to an unusual guest, experience, or
situation, tend to assume erroneously that the patient should always be
capable of 'willing' the same level of alertness. For instance one
narcoleptic patient attended a symposium on sleep disorders held out of
town. Although he normally naps frequently and has little energy or
enthusiasm during the day at home, he was able to remain wide awake and
alert almost all day at the symposium (He napped for half an hour in
the afternoon). This reinforced his wife's conviction that he could
always stay awake if he were really interested in their home life.

Our
experience with thousands of patients is that this is not correct. The
normal correlation which exists between interest and wakefulness simply
does not hold for those suffering from narcolepsy. Assuming that the
person with narcolepsy could fight it off if he really wanted to is as
illogical as assuming that no one need ever sleep because some people
are able to fight off sleep during unique (Christmas Party) or
emergency (fire) situations.

The symptoms must be defended as
manifestations of a disorder, and not signs of a willful lack of
effort. Without firm and knowledgeable counselling on the part of the
physician, family members are often unable to accept sleepiness as part
of the illness.

IF ONLY ANY ONE of my friends or in my family could get this thru their head.......I would be SOOO happy!!.....Grrrrr It is soooooooooo frustrating having a disease that is invisible like and/or just chalked up to laziness cause everyone gets tired.