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One of my nightmares is falling asleep and not being able to wake up. Sadly, sufferers of the rare “Kleine-Levin syndrome” are stuck in that kind of reality, falling asleep at a moment’s notice and not waking up for hours, days, or even weeks!
(You can watch a video interview about the real-life sleeping beauty disease, Kleine-Levin syndrome, on the left.)
Louisa Ball, the “real-life sleeping beauty” needs to find a real-life Dr. House! Seriously, this poor girl can’t even stay awake for a whole dance recital. She has slept through whole camping trips, birthday parties, and entire weeks of school. I mighta slept through a few days of school, but it wasn’t because I had a disease, let me tell you. Being 15 years old is hard enough, but living with this disease must really be the pits.
Louisa Ball, the real-life sleeping beauty, is seriously losing weeks of her life at a time. Her parents have to wake her up by shaking her and force some food down her throat and have her hit the bathroom before she falls asleep again.
Kleine-Levin syndrome is incredibly rare, actually. There are only, like, 1000 real-life sleeping beauty girls in the world. Louisa Ball just lost the genetic lottery. She’s likely to fall asleep for days at a time for a few years more, then grow out of the syndrome. Here’s hoping that her real-life sleeping beauty sickness doesn’t last much longer!