The Woman Who Couldn't Wake Up: Hypersomnia and the Science of Sleepiness

Sleep was taking over Anna’s life. Despite multiple alarm clocks and  powerful stimulants, the young Atlanta lawyer could sleep for thirty or  even fifty hours at a stretch. She stopped working and began losing  weight because she couldn’t stay awake long enough to eat. Anna’s  doctors didn't know how to help her until they tried an oddball drug,  connected with a hunch that something produced by her body was putting  her to sleep.

The Woman Who Couldn’t Wake Up tells Anna’s  story—and the broader story of her diagnosis, idiopathic hypersomnia  (IH), a shadowy sibling of narcolepsy that has emerged as a focus of  sleep research and patient advocacy. Quinn Eastman explores the science  around sleepiness, recounting how researchers have been searching for  more than a century for the substances that tip the brain into slumber.  He argues that investigation of IH could unlock new understandings of  how sleep is regulated and controlled. Eastman foregrounds the  experiences of people with IH, relating how publicity around Anna’s  successful treatment helped others form a community. He shows how a  group of patients who felt neglected or dismissed united to steer  research toward their little-known disorder.

Sharing emerging  science and powerful stories, this book testifies to the significance of  underrecognized diseases and sheds new light on how our brains  function, day and night. It is essential reading for anyone interested  in sleep and sleep disorders, including those affected by or seeking to  treat them.