This Is What It Feels Like When A Disease Suddenly Takes Over Your Mind

This article is part of The Huffington Post’s Project Zero campaign, a yearlong series on neglected tropical diseases and efforts to eliminate them.

Up until this year, Tekadiozaya Simon’s life was predictably ordinary. And that’s what he loved about it.

Simon, 42, was married, had three kids and a reliable job. He lived and worked in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as a fisherman ? which is considered a pretty decent position in a country plagued by war and poverty. But Simon’s life started to spiral out of control in May when he suddenly became something of a monster to be around. 

For about a year, he had been ignoring a number of strange symptoms ? including constant fatigue and pain in his legs. But last spring, Simon, and anyone in close range of him, couldn’t deny that something was seriously wrong. The once subdued and kind man became angry and aggressive. He started beating his wife and children frequently.

On its face, it may sound like textbook domestic abuse. But, according to medical experts in the area, what Simon endured was actually a classic case of human African trypanosomiasis, better known as sleeping sickness.

The DRC is a hotbed for the illness, which mostly affects impoverished people living in rural areas with minimal access to healthcare. Simon was somewhat “lucky” in that he lived in a major city when he got sick.

This parasitic disease, which used to kill people by the hundreds of thousands in Africa, is actually on the decline and may be stamped out by 2020. But experts warn that if ample resources aren’t allocated, the disease could rebound.