self-diagnosis

Yesterday morning, after another night of insomnia, I tried to decide what it meant that for each 72 hour period, I'd slept five hours. Perhaps I was witnessing the beginnings of FFI.

ABSTRACT - D T Max reports on case of Italian family afflicted with fatal familial insomnia, genetic disease that was not formally identified until 1986; FFI, as disease is known, is astonishingly rare; sometime in their 50's, half the members of aristocratic Giacomo family of Venice die of insomnia; in their search to understand their obscure gothic affliction, they inadvertently helped explain cause of mad cow disease; Elisabetta Roiter loes a family member to FFI about every three years; photos of Roiter, with her husband, and Prof Elio Lugaresi, who saw a connection between fatal insomnia and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (L) (Special issue of Magazine, The Cure Hunters)

Given that my life has always felt like an obscure gothic affliction, FFI seems highly plausible, though I'm not Italian.
Also likely: I'm manic-depressive and I'm scared of sleep. Can people be scared of sleep like they're scared of big mangy dogs or rollercoasters? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It's called hypnophobia or somniphobia.
Some fears that I, however, don't have are:
Anatidaephobia - Fear that somewhere, somehow, a duck is watching you
Arachibutyrophobia - Fear of getting peanut butter stuck to the roof of your mouth
Automatonophobia - Fear of ventriloquist's dummies, animatronic creatures, wax statues - anything that falsly represents a sentient being
Bromidrosiphobia - Fear of body smells (also known as Osphresiophobia)
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia - Fear of long words
Ithyphallophobia - Fear of seeing, thinking about or having an erect penis
antophobia - Fear of everything
Linonaphobia - Fear of string
Nephophobia - Fear of clouds
Phronemophobia - Fear of thinking
Selenophobia - Fear of the moon
Verbaphobia - Fear of words

Fears I might have:
Phobophobia - Fear of fear
Syngenesophobia - Fear of relatives
Theatrophobia - Fear of theaters

Posted by nchicha at September 9, 2003 04:53 AM