Ondine's curse vs Love

The first time i heard of this story, was during my pathophysiology class. We were discussing cases of patients, and one of them suffers from Ondine's curse, also known as primary alveolar hypoventilation or congenital central hypoventilation syndrome (lousy medical terminology), or put it in a nutshell, it means "loss of involuntary control of breathing."

Involuntary breathing? yes, involuntary breathing happens all the time until we die, and it happens subconsciously and automatically; while voluntary breathing, you can control it, such as taking a deep breath, or stop breathing for few seconds, etc.

Anyway, story time (according to my uni professor)

Version 1:
Ondine was a pretty girl and she fell in love with a young man. Ondine's father didn't like the young man and young man is cursed: He needed to stay awake all the time to breathe voluntarily, if he ever fell asleep (during sleep, breathing is under involuntary control.),he would die. He fell asleep, and so, he died.

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and now, i'm revising the case report and i just wikipedia-ed it; and this is another version, probably the real one. Apparently "father objects marriage" cases occur too often, too many stories, such as opera "O mio babbino caro" written by Gianni Schicchi, music composed by Giaccomo Puccini.

here's a clip of the opera (one of my favourite songs)



Anyway, version 2 of Ondine's curse (retold by Eric):

Ondine was a pretty girl. She wouldn't get old, unless she gave birth to a child.

One day, she met Lawrence. They fell in love and they were married. Lawrence made a love vow: "Every waken breath from me, it's a proof of my eternal love to you."

Later, Ondine gave birth to their son soon after, and she started to age. Lawrence didn't like her anymore, because she looked older and older.

Ondine was upset, and she cursed Lawrence: "Since you vowed that your breath was your love to me, and now, you can only breathe when you awake. If you do fall asleep,and you shall DIE!!!!!!!!!"

Lawrence fell asleep, and so he died.

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Love, it's what probably keeps us alive.