A 36-year-old woman in Vietnam has been raising a lot of eyebrows in her home country with claims of suffering from an insomnia that has lasted for over 11 years.
Ms. Tran Thi Luu, who works at a preschool in the city of Quảng Ngãi, has become the talk of Vietnamese social media after it was reported that she hasn’t slept in more than 11 years. In a recent interview, the woman said that her decade-long insomnia began with a bizarre crying episode. Tears just started flowing from her eyes for no apparent reason, and even trying to lie down and close her eyes couldn’t stop the trickle of water. The inexplicable crying eventually ceased, but so did her capacity to fall asleep. Try as she might, Luu couldn’t ‘log out’ anymore. Her eyes were tired, but her mind was fully awake, so for the last 11 years she has done little other than lie down with her eyes closed to relax while her husband and children are sleeping.
Photo: Alexandra Gorn/Unsplash
“The story of me not sleeping for 11 years is true, not made up or embellished to ‘get likes’ or ‘get views’!” Tran Thi Luu said. “If you look closely, you can see the effects. There are dark circles around my eyes and the skin around them is also very dark. But before that, I was white and pink and had no blemishes on my face.”
“He gave me a lot of courage,” Luss said about her husband. “Every night he advised me to calm down, close my eyes and go to sleep. But I couldn’t do that. While he was sleeping, I started wondering why I couldn’t sleep at all, and I decided to go to the hospital and find out.”
The 36-year-old woman reportedly went to Quang Ngai Provincial Mental Hospital for examination, and the doctors there diagnosed her with severe insomnia. They prescribed her medication, and even though taking it made her legs hurt to the point where she was unable to walk, she was so desperate to sleep that she took it. However, the medication was prohibitively expensive and the side effects were too severe, so she stopped taking it after a few months.
Photo: EVA
Ms. Luu’s next-door neighbor confirmed her condition, saying that the woman first confided in her about the insomnia 10 years ago, and she has been speaking about it ever since. The woman admits her story sounds crazy, but having lived a wall away from Luu for so long, she has no doubt she is telling the truth.
The Vietnamese insomniac remains positive about her condition, but she says that she has many health problems, like bone pain and stomach pain all year round, conditions that she thinks may be linked to her chronic lack of sleep. She remains hopeful that one day she will be able to sleep like a normal person again.
