Reuters health and science correspondent Kate Kelland’s recent article about the growing evidence linking GlaxoSmithKline’s Pandemrix swine flu vaccine to at least 795 cases of narcolepsy in European children does a lot of things well.

Kelland takes care to explain how the case against Pandemrix differs from previous “vaccine scares” that turned out to be false, and she emphasizes various uncertainties while bringing readers up to date on the public health investigation, reporting that “independent teams of scientists have published peer-reviewed studies from Sweden, Finland, and Ireland showing the risk of developing narcolepsy after the 2009-2010 immunization campaign was between seven and 13 times higher for children who had Pandemrix than for their unvaccinated peers.”

Kelland, whom we’ve complimented before, also makes sure to explain that there’s more to narcolepsy, an incurable, lifelong disorder, than falling asleep or being tired, and the profound effect it will have on the lives of the children who may have developed it from the vaccine. She writes:

Emelie Olsson is plagued by hallucinations and nightmares. When she wakes up, she’s often paralyzed, unable to breathe properly or call for help. During the day she can barely stay awake, and often misses school or having fun with friends. She is only 14, but at times she has wondered if her life is worth living.

Unfortunately, in her attempt to convey what is at stake in the Pandemrix case, Kelland overreaches, describing narcolepsy as “life-limiting” and “an illness that all but destroys normal life.” The sense one gets after reading the article is that, for Olsson, the other 794 children who many have developed narcolepsy from the vaccine, and for all people with narcolepsy in general, life is an inescapable nightmare, and death is often preferable. As Swedish public health official Goran Stiernstedt says in the article, the 30-60 deaths the vaccine is estimated to have prevented were not worth the 200 cases of narcolepsy it may have caused in his country:

With hindsight, this risk-benefit balance is unacceptable. “This is a medical tragedy,” he said. “Hundreds of young people have had their lives almost destroyed.”

Yet narcolepsy, like most disorders, has degrees of severity. Olsson has all four major symptoms of narcolepsy: excessive daytime sleepiness, cataplexy, sleep paralysis, and hypnagogic hallucinations. According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders, this actually puts her in the minority of people with narcolepsy, because just 10 to 25 percent of sufferers display all four symptoms during the course of their illness.

The symptoms themselves also vary. The most common major symptom after daytime sleepiness is cataplexy, occurring in “about 70 percent” of patients, according to the NIND. This can take the form of a brief, barely noticeable partial loss of muscle tone to a complete collapse lasting several minutes.

Dr. Eveline Honig, executive director of the Narcolepsy Network, the largest narcolepsy patient support group in America, has mixed feelings about Kelland’s depiction of narcolepsy.

“It is a very serious disorder, and very misunderstood, and very much not respected for the seriousness that it has … It’s not deadly, but it can devastate someone’s life completely,” Honig says. “The public tends to think, ‘Well, it can’t be that bad, just falling asleep once in awhile.’ It’s not like that.” Sufferers often feel isolated and misunderstood, and “sometimes lose everything.”

Sometimes. Not always.

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Sara Morrison is a former assistant editor at CJR. Follow her on Twitter @saramorrison.