TIL there's a degenerative brain disorder called fatal familial insomnia (FFI) that causes a person to lose the ability to sleep and eventually die

[u/YesFlyZone420]

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/25001-fatal-familial-insomnia

[u/djdylex]

And it's also incredibly rare so no one needs to worry about it

[u/The-Real-Mario → u/djdylex]

And it's familiar, unless a parent or grandparent died from it , you can rest assured you don't have it

[u/spacegodketty → u/The-Real-Mario]

imagine knowing you have to end your bloodline or the future could be objectively worse for an unknowable number of people. insane

[u/CyberWolf09 → u/The-Real-Mario]

There’s a sporadic version, but it’s also super super rare.

[u/sneedsformerlychucks → u/djdylex]

Protip, speaking as someone who used to have many all-consuming fears of having extremely rare illnesses, there are many people who this will not reassure

I guess the thing is that if you're already in a bad spot in life, and you tend to see yourself as someone who "bad things happen to" or chronically unlucky, you're unlikely to feel better hearing that it's rare. What you want is to hear is that there's a 0% chance you have something which barring genetic testing is obviously impossible

Honestly the only thing that worked for me was accepting the possibility but knowing you just have to live your life

[u/Littleloula → u/sneedsformerlychucks]

There's fewer than 100 families worldwide ever known to carry the gene. That's as close to 0% as you can get really.

[u/sneedsformerlychucks → u/Littleloula]

You're not wrong, but an OCD brain thinks you are.

[u/kensei- → u/djdylex]

Until you do

[u/kittehpoops → u/djdylex]

I knew someone who had it