A Vietnamese woman has been dubbed a “sleepless mutant” because of her alleged ability to shun sleep completely. She claims to have remained awake continuously for the last three decades.
49-year-old Nguyen Ngoc My Kim is known as “the seamstress who never sleeps” in her home province of Long An, a nickname she gladly accepts because it apparently suits her. Every time Miss Kim’s reputation attracted the attention of the media, she confirmed that she hadn’t slept in several decades, adding that the complete lack of sleep hadn’t affected her health at all. However, the Vietnamese seamstress has always been quick to point out that she wasn’t born with the ability to function without sleep, she conditioned herself to stay up late ever since she was a little girl. At first, she would lose sleep because she loved reading late into the night, and later, when she started working as a seamstress, she worked late in order to complete her orders. At one point, she didn’t feel the need to sleep at all, so she didn’t.
Every night was like that, I sat in front of my sewing machine and did not dare to sleep because I was afraid of not being able to keep up with orders,” Nguyen Ngoc My Kim told reporters. “The first few times I worked through the night I encountered many difficulties. Not only did I fall asleep constantly and made many mistakes while sewing, but I constantly felt tired and dizzy, and I even had a few traffic accidents.”
“However, after staying awake for months, then years at a time, my eyes and my body got used to the lack of sleep. From then on, I couldn’t sleep even if I wanted to,” Kim added.
Nguyen Ngoc My Kim’s decades-long insomnia has yet to be medically verified, but it’s more than a viral rumor. She claims that it’s mostly because people can see her working all day and all night long, because she is always at her sewing stall in Long Cang commune, Long An. The light is always on, and the door is always open, so people can just walk right in or just watch her work if they want.
“At first, few people paid attention to my lack of sleep,” My Kim said. “Later, many of them started noticing that I was always at my stall working. Seeing that the rumors were true, they spread the word, and before long, I became famous for my ability to stay awake continuously.”
News that Ms. Kim hadn’t slept in 30 years recently went viral on Vietnamese social media, and the seamstress once again found herself overwhelmed by visitors coming from all over the country to meet her and check if the rumors were true. She doesn’t mind, and the door of her stall in Long Cang is always open.
Apparently, Vietnam is the land of sleepless people, as Nguyen Ngoc My Kim is at least the third person we’ve featured from the Asian country with the ability to shun sleep completely. Last year, we wrote about Tran Thi Luu, who claimed to have been awake for over a decade, and about Thai Ngoc, an 80-year-old farmer who said he hadn’t slept in 60 years.
