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I had turned 13 and over the summer holidays, I began sleeping in until the afternoon and taking naps for the rest of the day. I put it down to feeling a bit depressed because my best friend at the time had moved away. My mum put it down to me being a lazy teenager. By the time I went back to school in September, the urge to sleep was becoming more frequent and more intense. I remember my eyes starting to sting in a religious studies lesson and I just wanted to shut them. At home, after school, I’d sit down and be asleep at exactly the same moment.

I was eight years’ old when I got chickenpox. Like any child with a common virus, I went back to school after two weeks but I began to fall asleep a lot in class and it soon became clear to my teachers and parents that something was wrong.

My GP referred me to Southampton General Hospital in the same month, where I spent two weeks under observation. I slept almost continuously while the doctors ran tests but they could find nothing wrong with me except the need to sleep, so I was moved up to see a consultant.

Today (September 22nd) is the second annual World Narcolepsy Day. This day is dedicated to raising awareness of narcolepsy on a global scale. Established by 24 patient advocacy organisations across 6 continents in 2019, World Narcolepsy Day unites the international narcolepsy community to inspire action, increase public knowledge, and elevate the voices of the 3 million people living with narcolepsy worldwide.

When I was at school, particularly in sixth form, I would take a nap everyday after school. I would really struggle to stay awake all day and would usually fall asleep in the car or on the bus on the way home. I always felt fatigued, something I and others often put down to ‘hormones’, staying up too late or my vegetarian diet. My sleepiness became my ’thing’, a defining feature. There are countless times when I fell asleep by accident when alone and I would wake several hours later.