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Symptoms of Narcolepsy?

I am a 19 year old male in college. Starting around my freshman year of high school I noticed I was falling asleep in all my classes every day. I definitely wasn’t getting the best sleep but I was usually getting around 7 or 8 hours a night. This went on all throughout high school. When I got my license at age 16 things got worse. I would become so tired in the drive home from school (30 min drive) that I’d have to pull over places along the way to take a short 5 minute nap or I knew I’d fall asleep while driving and kill myself or someone else. Sometimes I would even stop at the bottom of our long driveway and nap because I was so sure I’d sleep before I got to the garage. I go to college about 2 hours away from my hometown and come home some weekends to work, see family and friends, etc. I have found driving in the morning allows me to be safer than If I drove in the afternoon; however, I still come very close to falling asleep (and have fallen asleep a few times) at least twice during the drive. I get out at exits and do jumping jacks or run around but this only keeps me awake for about 5 minutes or so and then I’m back to feeling so tired I can barely function. I am also finding it difficult to study as I nap at least 2 times a day If not more and I still fall asleep in many of my lecture classes. I am able to stay up fairly late at night without many issues which is why I’ve prolonged going to the doctor for so long. I guess I don’t want to take the trouble to do sleep tests and meet with specialists and all that if my symptoms aren’t what narcoleptic people have experienced. I also don’t have any sleep paralysis or cataplexy symptoms that I know are common with narcoleptics too. I’m wanting opinions from those experienced with narcolepsy and am hoping you can give me valuable help to determine if I should do anything about these issues.  Thank you very much in advance!
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Avatar universal
Best to see the sleep expert and get a diagnosis. i would read a book about sleep disorder in advance, so you have a better idea of what proper patterns of sleep are when you see doc. Irregular sleeping hours and 2 naps are going to exacerbate any sleep disorder, or may be the cause of it.
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