The Sandman Cometh
Jan 25, 2023
POV: You wake up with a headache. You continue on with your day as usual, but quickly begin to realize that your muscles are sore, and your joints are achy…and you just don’t feel great. Maybe it’s all the work you did in the garden yesterday… so you brush it off. You still can’t shake the headache, though. A little while later you go to lift a stack of plates off the countertop, but your arms feel like jelly; you jolt, and they go crashing to the floor. This isn’t like you. You feel your forehead: a little warm, but not burning up or anything; you still don’t feel any better, and now your head is pounding and you’re really tired. More tired than you think you’ve ever been, actually. And you feel irritable as well, now. It’s odd, but suddenly you begin to feel as is if you’re going through slow motion: your thoughts feel heavy, your vision is slightly blurred, and your body doesn’t seem to want to keep up with your brain. You decide to sit down. A few minutes go by and the next thing you know, you can’t move. At all. You can breathe, albeit slowly, and you can see and hear and feel just fine, but you just... can’t… move……
*
From 1917 to 1926, a mysterious disease plagued the world. Millions of people, of all ages, were diagnosed with what was later coined “the Sleepy” or “the Sleeping” sickness. The first public recognition of the disease came in 1917 at the Vienna Society for Psychiatry and Neurology, where a neurologist by the name of Dr. Constantin Von Economo described a disease he called Encephalitis Lethargica. During his work at a Vienna clinic, where he treated patients stricken with psychological and neurological disorders, he observed patients that were affected by diseases like multiple sclerosis and delirium exhibit a highly unusual pattern of behaviors and symptoms. Some of these patients became extremely lethargic. Others died. Others yet dropped into a sort of comatose condition, where they were awake and alert, but unable to move or speak. Facing the eruption of this new infliction, Von Economo worked at depths find a cause. He ruled out poisoning by contaminants like toxic gas, environmental exposures, and food— Besides, in many cases only a single person in a household was affected. He ruled out common illnesses of the time like Polio, Syphilis and Typhoid. There were only two concrete connections he could see between the victims of this plague: they each had exhibited flu-like symptoms before becoming progressively ill, and they all presented with encephalitis, or inflammation of the brain, at their autopsies. Whether the flu-like symptoms were a symptom in themselves of “the Sleeping” sickness or had simply caused the individual to become immune-impaired, and therefore susceptible to “the Sleeping” sickness, is still unknown.
By 1919, likely spreading easily because of the movement of troops during World War I, the illness had risen to epidemic levels, expanding to other parts of Europe, to North America and to India. Upward of five million people would be affected by the disease during its almost-decade-long course.
Those that did become lethargic or comatose went on to either recover, to pass away from respiratory failure, or to simply exist, living in this paralyzed state of awakening for the rest of their lives. In some cases, the progression to coma was slow. In others, the afflicted would become abruptly frozen in time, despite anything they were doing in the moment, or any position they happened to be in. Of these “living statues”, about a quarter of the affected perished and even less of them recovered...eventually. Many of those that did recover stated that they were fully aware of their surroundings during the entire time of their ordeal, citing memories of people and events that took place around them as they lay locked in their catatonic state. A.K.A, hell. These “survivors” would often suffer from escalating neurological symptoms, with some falling into full psychosis. I mean, to state the obvious, who wouldn’t be traumatized after that?
Then, as suddenly as “the Sleeping” sickness came about, it virtually vanished.
To this day, the mystery of “the Sleeping” sickness is unsolved, with no known cause of its beginning or its end. Some modern theories include autoimmune disorder, bacterial infection, and Spanish Influenza.
A few isolated cases of suspected Encephalitis Lethargica have popped up around the globe in the years since its dramatic exit in 1926, and there are some virologists who believe it could emerge again at any time. Regardless, it has been classified as one of the biggest medical mysteries of our time.
And just like that, I may have nightmares, for—like—ever. 🤨 I also can’t decide if I want to take a nap right now, or if I never want to take one ever again.
Welp, happy travels, my dear friends, and may your colds never turn you into a statue. 🫣😬😧
I guess that bug I had a couple of weeks ago wasn’t so bad after all. 😶
[🧡 DT]