A patient shares her first-person account of her narcolepsy diagnosis and treatment journey on Mic.

I was diagnosed nearly two decades after I started showing symptoms. Similarly, Ortiz — who manages the condition himself — didn’t receive a legitimate diagnosis until he was 21, despite experiencing symptoms since he was 10. “A big chunk of patients are going to present [symptoms] when they’re kids and usually the lag time between symptom onset and actual diagnosis can be ten years or more.”

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