What an anger!

MEET the secondary school teacher who can’t get angry or joke around with her students because sudden emotions can send her to sleep. Jane Barlow, from Leek in Staffordshire, suffers from a rare collapsing condition which means she could nod off at any point. Jane, 36, suffers from a side-effect of sleep disorder narcolepsy called cataplexy triggered by feelings such as shock, embarrassment or even laughter. It can cause her to fall to the ground, her chest muscles collapse and she cannot move, see or speak. However, the mother-of-one, from Leek, Staffordshire, still manages to teach unruly teens every week at her high school in Newcastle-under-Lyme. The food technology teacher did collapse at a previous school but as the years have gone by she has learnt how to control the attacks. She said: ‘I use different methods now, like tapping my foot so I have something else to concentrate on because if I concentrate really hard on something else I can stop myself from collapsing. ‘All my friends know about the condition so they can warn me if they’re going to tell a joke so I can try to concentrate on something else.