A UK mum has revealed how she went to bed with symptoms of a cold and didn’t wake up for six weeks.
After beginning to suffer with a case of the sniffles, Jan Rothney believed that she was feeling a bit run down due to her hectic schedule. Failing to overcome the cold for a few weeks, she decided that an early night was exactly what the doctor ordered.
When she woke up, Jan was in a complete daze and feeling worse than before. Trying to seek help from her two daughters, she was stunned to realise that she had been asleep for a month-and-a-half.
A 45-day sleep
Speaking to creatorzine.com, Jan said: “My girls had to keep telling me that I had been asleep the whole time, as I didn’t believe them. Their faces looked so worried, though.
“Everything felt like a dream as I swayed between consciousness and confusion. In a state of shock, I worked out that I had been asleep for 45 days. Nothing, in that moment, felt real.”
Jan, now a 65-year-old former lecturer from Devon, was enjoying a night in the pub with her friends when she decided to head home and get into bed on September 11, 2003. She didn’t wake up until November 26, 2003.
Family care without medics
Noticing she wouldn’t wake up, Jan’s daughters called their grandmother and their next-door neighbour for help. Due to her still breathing, no call to alert medics was made.
The family worked together tirelessly to give Jan fluids so she wouldn’t get dehydrated over the next few weeks. Due to not being able to eat, Jan lost over 7lbs while she was asleep.
Once she was awake, Jan felt exhausted. She’d collapse on the bathroom floor and fall asleep again for a few hours when trying to go to the toilet.
Diagnosis and recovery
Eventually heading to her local doctors, where blood and urine tests were performed, Jan was informed that her cold was actually myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME); also known as chronic fatigue syndrome.
According to the NHS, long-term illness presents itself as extreme fatigue and can impact cognitive functions, including memory.
“It was absolutely terrifying to suddenly go from being super active to completely incapacitated, mentally and physically. I’d been severely run down, which had triggered the symptoms,” Jan said.
“I clung to the fact I could recover by focusing on small milestones, like getting out of bed each day. Some mornings, I’d slide my bum down the stairs because it was just too exhausting to walk.
“One day, I fell asleep in the hallway. When I woke up, I never knew how long I’d been sleeping for – it was either a few hours or all day.”
It took five months after her diagnosis for Jan to be able to drive to the shops. Her symptoms came back three years later, and she ended up being asleep for days before being referred to a chronic fatigue clinic.
Looking to make a change, Jan quit her job, retrained as a health coach and wrote a book about her experience. She also learned how to stay calm when symptoms arose and to note any evidence that her body was getting better.
20 years on from her last sleeping episode, Jan said: “It’s been a hard road, but I have more energy than ever before now. I’ve taught my body to thrive again. Many of us are given a wake-up call to change the way we are living – and this was definitely that.
“If I had carried on living an unsustainable lifestyle and accommodating everyone, I could’ve become far more ill. I absolutely feel that, in a weird way, this illness saved my life.”
