What Is Sleeping Beauty Syndrome? Minnesota Woman, 23, Suffers From Rare Condition

A young woman in Minnesota has been diagnosed with “Sleeping Beauty Syndrome,” is not too fond of sleeping – at least not all day, which she cannot help. Delanie Weyer, 23, has a rare neurological disorder called Kleine-Levin Syndrome, and it started when she was only 18-years-old. The disease can leave her sleeping for a multiple of weeks.

“I sleep anywhere from 15 to 20 hours a day. When I am awake I’m very spacey, delusional, just not in touch with reality,” Weyer told news station WCCO. “I just have no motivation to do anything, very depressed feeling, really frustrated because I don’t know what’s going on.”

The Wyoming resident said she has even missed holidays, family celebrations and other important events.

“I’ve missed major life events, I’ve missed a Thanksgiving, I’ve missed Easter,” Weyer said. “I missed my grandpa’s 85th birthday. I missed my 21st birthday because I was in [an] episode.”

At first, her mother thought she was either lazy or on drugs.

“I’m the typical mom that would make her, force her to get up and she’s very irritable and again the blank stare and I question was she lying to me, was she being lazy, was she taking some kind of drug,” Jean Weyer told WCCO.

Weyer’s episodes last from several days to a few weeks. Her longest and latest lasted for five weeks. When Weyer is under the sleeping beauty spell, she would only wake up to eat, drink or go to the bathroom.

The condition can make patients irritable or hallucinate. There are not too many cases worldwide, with only 500 cases documented, mostly happening in teenage boys, according to the Kleine-Levin Syndrome Foundation.

As of late, there isn't a cure for Kleine-Levin Syndrome, but medication is believed to help alleviate the intensity and duration of the spells, the New York Post reported.

“It’s one in a million — literally,” sleep medicine doctor and neurologist W. Christopher Winter, MD, of Charlottesville Neurology and Sleep Medicine and author of the upcoming book "The Sleep Solution: Why Your Sleep Is Broken and How to Fix It," told Yahoo Beauty. Winter said that the condition is “so rare, it’s difficult to study."

Still, Weyer wants to spread awareness about the disorder.

“I can educate them, this is what I have. My episodes are not a choice,” she said.