Hello everyone I got this article through my google alerts. I always read articles that seem to be asking for opinions or advice from other Narcoleptics. Here is the article below:
A cough two floors away
By Jaquelyn Mitchard
I
have a son who I think has a form of narcolepsy -- and if you have it
and you suffer because of it, this is not a joke so don't write and
accuse me of that.
Most teen boys sleep soundly.
Dan's
sleep is shocking. He can fall asleep in the middle of a conversation,
the middle of a task (even outdoors) and probably in the middle of the
road.
In fact, Dan almost once immolated
himself when his goose-necked reading light drooped down over him and
his book and started his mattress smoldering. If his brother -- who
smelled the smoke and what he thought was burning flesh -- had not
awakened Dan, he certainly would have been severely hurt if not killed
and burned down the house, which, of course, we would not have minded
as much as Dan being hurt.
On his finger is the scar he bears from sleeping through the lamp actually burning his thumb but not waking him.
So
it is not a surprise that new research shows that children can sleep
through smoke alarms -- though I, as an adult can wake to the sound of a
cough two floors away -- but waken to the sound of their parents' voices
telling them to get up and get out of the house.
The
study, at the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Columbus
Children's Hospital, used only a sampling of 24 children; but I'm
taking it as reliable.
Not only Dan, but his
younger sister -- a swell sleeper since her adenoids were removed -- wake
to my voice, but have, at various times, not wakened to the doorbell,
the telephone or (this is true) a fireworks display on our lawn.
For
the co-author of the study, Gary Smith, this evidence suggests that
what works for adults might not work for children. Children in the
study woke to a voice saying "(Child's first name) (Child's first
name)! Wake up! Get out of bed! Leave the room! And they did so in only
20 seconds -- while being able to sleep through 100 decibels of a smoke
alarm, which is about four times louder than the average home alarm.
Often,
when I go downstairs to get Dan up -- after having been awakened,
through two sets of floors and ceilings, by his "Sonic Boom" alarm
clock, I have suggested to my husband that we become billionaires by
inventing an alarm clock that allows parents to record their voices
shouting "(Child's first name!) (Child's first name!) Get up now! You
will miss the bus! You are late for work!" followed by a direct spray
of cold water in the direction of the sleeper's feet. (I cannot claim
credit for the water idea; to wake him up our daughter regularly mists
Dan as if he were a plant).
However, the point of the study is well taken.
It's
frightening to think that even my eldest and most responsible child
might not waken to the sound of a fire alarm if he were home and in
charge of the others.
It also suggests that
smoke alarms are beeping to the choir, as it were, since parents tend
to wake to all manner of bumps (sniffles, sobs, shrieks, taps, the
click of front doors being open surreptitiously by curfew evaders) in
the night. They may not be working for the target audience, which,
presumably, is someone who would not wake to the sound of a smoke alarm
going off, or even a dog barking. (Our dog barks religiously and
raucously at wind, birds, cars a mile away and joggers, every morning
at 6 a.m. and this affects my kids' sleep, even the baby's, not at all).
One possible suggestion, an anecdotal one, occurs to me.
Kids,
even grown kids, who have normal and responsible parents don't think
that alarms of any kind are their responsibility, I would venture. I
believe, although I don't know this -- and Dan nearly burning up is a
special case -- that my kids think that no matter what happens or how
loud it is, we will take care of it.
We have taught them that, I think, and perhaps, to some degree, to their detriment.
However,
I would wager that the instant that they become parents, too, their
hearing will become acute -- like that of a deer in a night meadow.
Jacquelyn
Mitchard's new novel "Cage of Stars" is available now in bookstores.
She welcomes readers' responses sent in care of this newspaper or to
Tribune Media Services Inc., 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, NY.
14207. E-mail responses may be sent to tmseditors@tribune.com or visit
her Web site at http://
www.jackiemitchard.com
Now everyone this article will stay on the blog as long as Mrs. Mitchard is okay with my posting it, I have touched base with her via. email and asked for her permission, if she would rather it not be posted I will be forced to delete the post. I hope some of you also email her and give more opinions and advice.
Best Regards In Health,
Living Narcoleptic
