Joanna Cox, 38, from England, called herself the “real-life Sleeping Beauty” for her unusual condition that caused her to sleep up to 22 hours a day. “When I fall asleep, I can’t be awakened,” said Cox, describing the effects of his disease. “I wake up not knowing what today is or how long I’ve been sleeping.” she said.
FEELS SLEEPLESS EVEN IF YOU SLEEP ONE NIGHT
“It’s honestly ruining my life – I’m like a real-life Sleeping Beauty.” According to the Mayo Clinic, Joanna Cox suffers from idiopathic hypersomnia, a rare sleep disorder. It causes the patient to be “very sleepy during the day, even after a full night of good sleep.” “He also often has trouble waking up after you’ve gone to sleep,” they write. “If you take a nap, you usually don’t feel refreshed, and you may wake up confused and disoriented.”
EVERYTHING STARTED IN A MOMENT
Cox first realized something was wrong in 2017, after he always felt extraordinarily tired and couldn’t sleep through the day. “It started from nowhere – nothing triggered it, I felt really tired,” complained the Englishman, who owned a cleaning company at the time.
HE WAS STARTING TO SLEEP WHILE DRIVING
Cox eventually realized that he had fallen asleep in unusual places, such as the steering wheel, which caused him to stop driving altogether. Cox recalled a time when he slept outside one night. “Before I was diagnosed, I fell asleep in a cabin at a nightclub,” the mother of two complained. “They thought I was drunk and fired me. It was so embarrassing.”
WRONG DIAGNOSIS MADE FOR YEARS
Hoping to get to the bottom of his exhaustion, the perfect sleeper reported to the doctor who misdiagnosed him with depression. However, paramedics quickly dismissed it as Cox showed no symptoms other than fatigue. This started the saga of years of fruitless doctor visits with paramedics falsely claiming to have everything from infections to cancer.
THERE IS NO TREATMENT FOR THE DISEASE
Finally, in October 2021, doctors referred Cox to a sleep clinic, where doctors discovered that Cox had idiopathic hypersomnia. Unfortunately, the cause of the condition is not yet known, meaning there is no available cure.
WAKE UP FOR A FEW MINUTES AND SLEEP AGAIN
By then, Cox’s overdoses had snowballed, and he was trying to stay awake for more than a few hours each day. “I was awake 12 hours a day recently, and that was the longest I’ve been awake in about six years,” he said. “The shortest is usually just a few minutes, enough time to wake up, have a drink, and then go back to sleep.”
DON’T MAKE A PLAN BECAUSE HE DOESN’T KNOW SLEEP STATUS
His condition got so bad that Cox had to quit his job in 2019 because he couldn’t stay awake. Constantly tired, the girl frequently misses flights, including a planned trip to Spain with her daughters, Caitlin (20) and Isabelle (18). “I can’t work, I can’t drive, and I can never make plans because I don’t know if I’ll be awake or not,” Cox said.
PEOPLE THINK YOU ARE LAZY
Cox says she never “feels rested” despite sleeping 18 to 22 hours a day because of her condition. “It’s really sad when people say I’m ‘lazy’ or that I should set more alarms,” she said.