Memory problems — there's a long list of things she couldn't learn to remember, but the prime example was where she put her keys. What we know now, is that she couldn't form memories of setting something down. Things just kind of fall out of her hands, and unlike most people there's no memory of setting it down.

Lowered immune system — when your body doesn't get sleep, it can't fight off sickness, chronic bronchitis as a child, and we could almost guarantee that a cold most people could kick in a week, she'd still have in a month.

Lifelong insomnia, or delayed sleep disorder — the body can develop a fear of going to sleep. Every time you stop breathing, the body goes into full on emergency response to wake you up and start breathing again. When this is happening at least once a minute, in some cases much more often all night, it's no wonder your body is afraid to let you fall asleep.

Hypoglycemia — the body also has trouble regulating sugar levels when it doesn't get sleep. Nausea and vomiting - standing outside with her while she vomited was a regular occurrence every morning at school -due to sleep deprivation. Unfortunately this was misinterpreted as everything from "stress" to bulimia. And on bad days if a teacher caught her, she'd be sent home for being sick — a school policy that lead to her missing a lot of school.

Obesity — without genetic precedent, or poor eating habits. My partner is a large framed woman, but she's also extremely strong there's a large amount of muscle hidden under the fat. Lack of sleep, meant her body chemicals weren't regulating properly and actually caused her body to put on weight, and keep it on regardless of how little she ate (there were months where she barely kept food down the nausea was so severe), or how many walks she went for.

If this wasn't bad enough, not sleeping is devastating to your ability to cope with stress, which can bring on, or significantly increase the severity of clinical depression. This can be ridiculously difficult to cope with, while also dealing with this many medical problems, doctors appointments, medications which were sometimes worse than the symptoms... and a lack of compassion from a lot of people around her.

Finally, this year, at age 26, one university professor noticed that she seemed to be unable to remember hard facts, which was grossly disproportionate to her knowledge of concepts, reasoning skills, etc. Months after psychological testing concluded that something was indeed "weird," and many doctors appointments later she was diagnosed with sleep apnea. Because it's so severe in her case, and it's gone untreated for so many years recovery is slow. It's explaining many of her medical problems though, and slowly, she's beginning to realize that her weight is not something she could have done anything about.

The years of self hatred are hard to let go of though... that will probably take longer than any of it. If your intuition tells you something is wrong, but your doctors won't listen, keep looking until you found someone who will listen and work with you. The easy diagnosis isn't always the right one. I've slept next to her for 8 years, and she's never snored, but she definitely has sleep apnea.