Doctors warned a schoolgirl from the American state of Indiana that giggling could cause her short-term paralysis. This is reported by the Daily Mail. 15-year-old Jordan Coomer suffers from narcolepsy, a disorder of the nervous system that causes sudden attacks of sleep. Every two hours, the girl is seized by an irresistible drowsiness, and she falls asleep for 20 minutes. A rare disease struck Jordan in 2017 when she was 12 years old. She began to fall asleep in class, while talking with her mother, and when doing homework. “Sometimes she cried because she wanted to do something, but she just didn't have the strength to do it,” her mother recalls.
Ten months after the first symptoms appeared, Jordan was diagnosed with narcolepsy. According to doctors, the disease could have developed after a sore throat, which she had had in the summer of 2016. In addition to sleep attacks, a girl has cataplexy - a short-term loss of muscle tone as a result of strong emotions. A normal giggle can result in complete numbness that lasts from a few seconds to 30 minutes. All this time, Jordan remains conscious, but can neither move nor scream.
“I have dreams, I want to do so many things, so it was hard to learn about the disease, which, ultimately, will affect me and what I do for the rest of my life,” the girl admits. Despite her narcolepsy, she is an excellent student, plays sports and rides a horse. In 2019, it was reported that doctors spent several months looking for the cause of the disease afflicting 17-year-old Australian resident Alexis Harrison. The girl is bleeding from her eyes and mouth, and she also has seizures.