Fatal Familial Insomnia.

I was basking in the sun, laying on the hood of my car in the diner parking lot, when my phone rang. I let it go to voicemail, and continued to grin at the elderly breakfast crowd giving me the old stink-eye as they shuffled to get their eggs benedict.

When my phone rang again, I answered. It was the doctor. My tests came back.

I have Fatal Familial Insomnia. I’m the lucky winner of a rare genetic lottery preventing me from sleeping. It’s degenerative, he said. He urged me to come in for a consultation on how to manage what was left of my life. It’s fatal, after all. Says so right there in the name of the disease!

I started to laugh as the doctor talked, and the old folks went painstakingly out of their way to avoid me. Are th...

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