Narcolepsy 360: Lauren Thomas

TW: This episode discusses sexual assault and rape, which may be triggering for some individuals.

Lauren Thomas is a person with narcolepsy, a narcolepsy advocate and works in the champagne business.

In this vulnerable and candid episode, Lauren shares how she was diagnosed with narcolepsy just a little over a year and a half ago, but recounts how narcolepsy symptoms were part of her childhood. Lauren also shares her journey with mental health issues, which she now considers were linked to narcolepsy and directly contributed to her delayed diagnosis. After college, she finally saw an endocrinologist, who was helping her with weight loss and recommended a sleep study. This was a pivotal experience that led to a diagnosis of Type 1 Narcolepsy at the age of 28.

Despite Lauren's long journey to diagnosis, she's taken time to fine tune her medication and adapt her life to support her symptom management, and during this period began to work for her family's company, Cheurlin Champagne, the 1st African American-owned Champagne Company.

Lauren also tested positive for COVID-19 this past March. She shares her experience fighting the virus and how her symptoms weren't necessarily the standard symptoms being communicated.

You can follow Lauren at @lmt826 on Instagram and her family's business, Cheurlin Champagne, @cheurlin1788 on Instagram. If you are interested in finding out more information about Cheurlin Champagne go to www.cheurlin.com. Lauren recommends Wide Awake and Dreaming by Julie Flygare. She is on the planning committee for World Narcolepsy Day with Project Sleep. She also recommends an alarm clock called MedCenter. She says, " I am obsessed with my talking alarm clock. I can set up to 4 different alarms at a time and it literally says 'the time is .... this your reminder to take your meds..' relentlessly, it's annoyingly efficient!"

You can follow Wake Up Narcolepsy at @narcolepsy_360 on Instagram, @wakeupnarcolepsy on Instagram and Facebook and @wakenarcolepsy on Twitter. Let us know your thoughts about this episode by using the hashtag #narcolepsy360 and please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.