Sleep Disorders

July 26, 2006 — -- At 17 years old, Peter Polanksy was ranked No. 1 on Canada's junior tennis circuit, but his rank was put into jeopardy earlier this year when his own sleep nearly killed him.

Marlene Nobrega, a sports medicine expert traveling with the team says her phone rang at 12:30 at night, she says the caller said, "You must come now. A guest has fallen."

Nobrega got another phone call, from the team captain who was screaming into the phone, "Nobrega, it's Peter. Come now."

Polansky had just jumped out his hotel window. Nobrega was one of the first on the scene.

"It [the window] was shut. So he turned his back to the glass and then kicked it out. And as he was kicking it out, he fell out the window backwards," Nobrega said. It was a three-story window.

"I guess he tried to sit up and he saw that he was bleeding. He saw the pool of blood on the ground and then Polansky just started screaming, 'You have to help me I'm dying!'"

Seriously wounded but still conscious, Polansky told Nobrega what he could remember.

"He said he thought someone was in his room attacking him. And he tried to get away," Nobrega said.

But when hotel security investigated, they found that no one had entered or left the room -- except Polansky.

What would cause Polansky to panic so violently? To break a window and throw himself out of it? Miraculously, Polansky survived after a hedge cushioned his fall.

Polansky recalls, "I looked at my legs -- it was just to cut open, like a grapefruit is. I couldn't believe it."

Polansky says he remembers what terrified him so badly that he almost took his own life.

"Uh, well, I saw like a black figure, with like a knife just standing by my bed, towards where the door was. I said to myself, 'I need to get away,'" he said.

It was all a dream that drove him out a three story window. It turns out, Polansky nearly sleep-walked to his death.

"Sleep disorders are incredibly more prevalent than most people used to believe," said Dr. Mark Mahowald, one of the world's experts on sleep disorders.