A mum-of-three with a rare sleeping disorder has spent £3,000 on internet shopping sprees while fast asleep
Kelly Knipes, 37, was taken aback when a deliver lorry containing a £100 full-sized plastic basketball court showed up outside her house.
She’s also bought fridges, tables, a Wendy house and hundreds of pounds worth of Haribo sweets during her nocturnal shopping sprees.
She has had to return the items to avoid sinking into debt and says her husband resorted to locking her phone away to stop her wasting money.
Kelly, from Basildon, Essex, says it was all too easy to ‘rack up debt everywhere’ as her credit card details were saved on her phone.
She would wake up and feel a sense of dread when she found email receipts for items she unknowingly bought during the night.
‘We still needed to put food on the plate and I was spending money that we didn’t have and I started borrowing money.
‘I couldn’t refund any food purchases, like the Haribos. Then there were other purchases I made that I just never returned because it was just getting a bit too much, I would just wake up and put them to the side.’
Despite her husband’s efforts to lock doors and hide her phone she still managed to find away to buy items on websites including Ebay and Argos.
Other strange purchases included £58 worth of cookie jars, salt and pepper pots and books about teaching – despite her not being a teacher.
Kelly has been diagnosed with a parasomnia – a sleep disorder involving abnormal behaviour and perceptions.
She has also been found to have obstructive sleep apnea, which stops her breathing in her sleep and forces her brain to partially wake up – allowing her to sleepwalk.
Although she was known to sleepwalk occasionally as a child, her condition really ramped up in 2006 when she was pregnant with her first child Henry.
She overdosed on diabetes medication in her sleep while she was 20 weeks pregnant but says there was no serious, long lasting damage.
As a single mother she didn’t seek help for her symptoms as she was afraid her abilities as a mum would be questioned.
After marrying husband Jamie, 40, and having two more sons, Kelly says the condition really started to take its toll.
She said: ‘It was horrible, because I didn’t know what I was going to do in the night.
‘I was physically exhausted, I felt so drained every day of my life. I didn’t do anything with my kids, I was constantly in hospital because I wasn’t sleeping at night.
‘Every other parent was taking their kids out – my kids thought the hospital was their version of the day out. I didn’t feel like I could be a mum or a wife.’
She says GPs frequently dismissed her symptoms as being down to the stress of looking after three disabled children.
It was only when she wrote directly to two consultants pleading for help that one took on her case.
The help came after years of searching for a solution including taking part in a sleep study at Royal Brompton Hospital.
Kelly was diagnosed and given a device which keeps the airways continuously open, which she says has left her feeling ‘rested and re-energised’ for the first time in ages.
She now wears an oxygen mask at night which helps to regulate her breathing which has managed to control both her conditions.
‘It really has given me my life back,’ she added.
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