How it all began-birth through adolescents

This may be boring, but I am going to give a brief narrative of my birth, childhood, etc. Mainly to point out that it was pretty typical.
But before I get to that, this is funny, and typical of my evenings of late. I got home from work at about 6:30pm, very excited to start reading the sixth Harry Potter book. First I had to scoop the cat litter, cover some outdoor plants, and make myself a bowl of soup. I got to page 16 and fell asleep on the couch. I slept "normally" for I don't know how long and then towards 8pm I started trying to wake up. I am never really sure how long these episodes last. But I just could not wake myself up. For what seems like a long time I even had my eyes open and was staring at the coffee table, on the coffee table is a strange stuffed dog that my cats use as a bed. I was hallucinating that it was moving, just slightly as if one of my cats was under it wiggling around. When I finally woke up all three cats were asleep around me on the couch. I used to be afraid to open my nightstand drawer because it was at my eye level so when I would have one of these episodes, sleep paralysis, it is what I would stare at, and I would hallucinate roach antennae coming out of the top of the drawer. No matter how many times I have a sleep paralysis attack, sometimes I still have to reason with myself when I wake up to convince myself it was just a hallucination. Mostly it is frustrating because I often just sit and think about how much stuff I have to do, but can't wake myself up to do it all.

A doctor once explained many of the symptoms of narcolepsy as a problem with my mind/body going into REM at the wrong times. He said that during REM our bodies are paralyzed so we don't act out our dreams and injure ourselves. He said the sleep paralysis thing is my mind snapping out of REM before my body. This was helpful because at the time I swore I was having seizures in my sleep because I would "wake up" and be staring at the spot where the ceiling meets the wall and the line would be vibrating, so I thought I was having a seizure and that my body was actually moving. His explanation made me realize that my eyes were just stuck in "rapid eye movement" mode and that I was not having a seizure.

Back to how it all began. I was born in New York. I remember hearing that during delivery my umbilical cord got wrapped around my neck and at one point they blind folded my poor mom, I can' t imagine them doing that today, it would have freaked me out even more. Anyway, my mom says it was a very long delivery, but no major problems. I was very small, 5 pounds 6 ounces and was in an incubator for a bit. My mother smoked cigarettes while pregnant. I guess I was a pretty healthy baby in general. The only other infant event was that my grandmother fell down a flight of stairs while holding me. My mother was at the bottom of the stairs and couldn't do anything but sit on the bottom step to break her fall. She said it was awful because I didn't make a sound. When unwrapped the blankets I was fine, not even a scrape.
When I was 8 years old we moved to Florida, and I have lived here ever since. In general I was pretty healthy, and if you ask my family I was hyper and never stopped talking from the day I started! I was a very skinny child. I remember my doctors encouraging my mom to give me shakes to gain weight. It was like I had a parasite or something, because I ate and ate, but was very skinny. I also seem to remember having strep throat a lot. My mom tried to get my tonsils taken out, but they wouldn't do it without 10 reported cases in a year. Anyway I remember taking antibiotics a lot as a kid. So much that now I have to take the really strong ones that come in the bubble packs. I seem to have built up a resistance.
The only other odd thing was I remember sometime between the age of maybe 10 and 14 years old I had to get one of my immune shots again because they apparently realized I had gotten it too early the first time, before age two. I have done some reading on antibiotics and immunization shots and it seems there is a correlation between various health issues and the timing of immunizations and antibiotics. It seems they are definitely telling doctors not to give immunizations if the child is on antibiotics or within a certain time period. I remember being on antibiotics so much that it is likely that I could have been on them or had been on recently when I got that immune shot again.

Well here is a good breaking point. I will continue with high school and on later. I have been thinking about future posts and gathering info from other sites and have some ideas for future posts to include: Various medicaitons, sex and narcolepsy, funny cataplexy stories, links to videos on narcolepsy, marriage and narcolepsy, divorce and narcolepsy, work settings and narcolepsy, socializing and narcolepsy, life adjustments that may/may not help, links to other sites, conference info, etc. So keep coming back!
A Sleepy Girl