Sometimes, you wake up early on a weekend and wish you hadn't. With the week's work well and truly behind you, it seems like all you needed was a nice, long rest. Unfortunately, your body clock is so perfectly tuned that it awakens you from slumber, ready for a day's work that won't be fulfilled, leaving you feeling groggy and dissatisfied. It would be easy to curse yourself for not sleeping enough, but for 22-year-old Beth Goodier, that inconvenience must be a fantasy. Beth suffers from a condition called Kleine-Levin Syndrome (KLS), though it's more colloquially known as Sleeping Beauty Syndrome. While some people might joke about sleeping for weeks or months on end, that scenario is a reality for Beth - and it's wreaking havoc on her life. Beth Goodier is a sufferer of what we've come to call Sleeping Beauty Syndrome. Whereas most people wake up after our daily quota of eight hours, Beth goes weeks and months without waking up, meaning that when she is awake, it's a life of pressure. Beth's mother Janine suspects that nearly four of the past five years of Beth's life has been spent asleep. At 22, she should have built upon her fantastic grades to graduate from university, with a view to forging a career as a child psychologist. But instead, spends most of her time unaware that life is passing her by. "The most horrible symptom is her confusion," explains Janine. "When she wakes for a few hours a day, she does not know where she is and becomes very agitated. The toughest year was when her friends finished their A-levels and went off to university, because Beth knew when she woke up that it should have been her, and that hurt her badly. And when she hurts, I hurt." Beth spends the majority of these episodes (which can last for as long as six months) asleep. But she spends a couple of hours each day eating and going to the bathroom, though she's unresponsive and effectively sleepwalking. Not much is known about KLS, but it typically sets in around puberty and sufferers don't respond to treatment or medicine. The good news is that the condition doesn't seem to be permanent: by the time the patients turn 30, the symptoms have usually disappeared. The hope is that by the time Beth recovers from this condition, she still has the strength and resilience to make up for lost time. Source
