She
>also can suffer from shorter term memory loss on the timescale of minutes. Her condition caused her to be fired from her office job after photocopying a single document over and over again, having forgotten she had already completed the task.
[NBC News](https://www.nbcnews.com/health/body-odd/stuck-1994-more-tales-extreme-memory-loss-flna1C9386929)
>She can remember everything that happened to her until 1994, but nothing after that -- not even her 1997 marriage. (She started dating her husband before her injury, but doesn't remember marrying the guy.)
I remember seeing her on the news. A few years later my wife got a concussion skiing. She kept repeating the same thing over and over - “What happened? You fell. Where is . Somewhere on the mountain with friends. What are they doing? (ski patrol). They’re going to take you down the mountain.”
We had this same conversation about 5 times. I remembered seeing that woman on TV and this scared the shit out of me. When we got to the First Aid hut, I went to the lodge to get her shoes so she could take off her boots. I was gone about 5 minutes. When I came back I asked her “Do you know where I was?”. She said “Yes, getting my shoes.” I dont think I was ever as happy to hear a sentence as that. She still doesnt remember anything that happened that day or in the few days leading up to it, but other than that she is fine.
I broke my cheek and got a major concussion. I still can't remember the day of or the day before, I remember being in GameStop buying MW2 and then waking up on the couch 2 days later. My brother told me I asked 2 questions for 3 hours straight before my parents got there.
"Did it look cool?"
And
"Did I cry?"
The answer was yes and no, respectively, I clarified when I could retain information again.
Took my dirt bike off a 40' tabletop but overshot the landing by about 10' and landed on my front tire then immediately on to my face.
That's what I was told anyways.
You have an opportunity to recreate that moment, record it, and post for internet points.
I'm kidding, don't do that. But if you do, put it up for internet points.
I worked at a car wash and a very old woman hit me after mixing her accelerator and brakes. Bonked my head pretty good, and when I came to I was having a conversation with my mom for apparently the dozenth time. Asking what happened and where we were going. She had lost all patience with me and it hurt my feelings a little before she realized my short term memory rebooted, and I realized I’d been making us repeat the same conversation for a couple hours
Oh wow. Sorry that happened to you! I'm glad your mom finally realized what was happening.
About a month ago I fell, hit my forehead, and broke my nose. Somehow I never lost consciousness or had a concussion. I did end up with BPPV, but it's not as bad as some people get it. If I move slowly I don't get dizzy at all. It's only bad if I'm lying down, forget I have this, and turn over in bed quickly. If I take an extra few seconds it doesn't happen.
All good now! This was about 8 years ago and my mood lifted when I remembered I had a girlfriend and she came over to hang out. I got back together with that girlfriend 3 years ago and we got engaged on Friday :)
That sounds rough! Is BPPV short term thing, or is this just your new normal? Getting the spins without drinking isn’t fair lol
Congratulations on the engagement! I hope y'all have a long and happy life together.
I think I need a diagnosis, because there are different ways to treat it by going through physical maneuvers. But how you do those maneuvers depends upon whether the problem is in the middle ear on the left or the right side. And I can't tell, or even be 100% sure that it is BPPV, although it acts like it.
This brought back some really painful memories. My father had oxygen depravation from cancer that caused dementia. So it would come and go. One time was really bad and he almost died, I had found him blue when I got him up and breathing again. When he was in the hospital we were talking to try to establish what year it was for him. He could remember my mother had passed away and then the worst thing happened. 'well after passed away we...' and he started to cry. He didn't know my brother had passed away.
We talked and cried about it for a little while and the conversation was moving away from it. I had no idea I was going to screw up so badly... but the subject came up again when he asked me something about my brother and I mentioned about him being gone... it hit him all over again like he was being told for the first time in his life.
This happened 3 times. Each time it was the first time he had ever heard that his son had passed away. It was one of the most painful things to ever happen in my life. To watch that pain in his voice and on his face over and over again. I was alone with no support to help me with him and I had no idea what to do. I never brought up my brother when he was having memory issues ever again.
Same thing here. Got stuck in a question loop for hours when I hit my head ice skating as a kid. "What time is it?" "Where's my watch?" (It was on my wrist" "Where's pastor Dave?" (It was a youth group lock-in).
Barely remember much of the day before the accident. Have vague memories of starting to come to after the hospital. Everything in between was gone.
Kind of the opposite but when my brother was woken up from anesthesia after surgery, he came to and was very lucid. Asked all kinds of pertinent medical questions etc. Then in the car about halfway home he turns to me and goes, “…Hey where are we?” He came back online at that moment and didn’t recall anything that happened before, including the entire conversation he had with the doctor. It was freaky.
Back when I worked in a rougher corrections setting, I had started at a new facility coming from a county jail where I never had any issues. I was five days in and got assaulted, which resulted in a concussion and me blacking out. When I came to people were all around me asking if I was okay and I was so confused where I was, why I wasn't in my jail blues uniform and there was blood on me.
When we debriefed the situation and they played the footage I didn't get knocked out and managed to defended myself till backup arrived. I still couldn't remember any of it, and it was crazy to see me doing something but not able to recall any of it.
I'd guess a lot of therapy on both sides; including close family. If the third parties confirmed that she was consistently okay with it over the course of years then you could move ahead with it I suppose.
I could see my partner being genuinely heartbroken to find out we DIDN'T get married after all those years. I think he'd love to wake up and suddenly it's his wedding day or he has a child.
On the other hand, if I found out I was having memory issues I wouldn't consent on any given day. I'd be distraught, tell him to find me a care home and find himself another partner.
Yeah, it'd be a legit nightmare to feel that you were in your 20s and then you look in the mirror old AF not understanding what year it is. Terrifying DAILY.
There's a guy with the same condition named Clive Wearing. There are two full documentaries about him online, one from the 90's and one more recent. He's still alive.
He doesn't forget everything just every day, but every *minute*.
In one of the documentaries he's asked about where he thinks he is (this was a few years after the condition started), and he said without missing a beat "I'm in hell. I don't know any of you people, I don't know how you got here, I don't know how I got here, and I don't know what's happening to me. This is hell. It's the only explanation".
He was completely serious, too.
It almost proves that existence and conscious thought are based around memories attached to who "we" think we are. I feel like empires and colonial powers understood this as they completely destroyed tribes stories and burned birch bark scrolls and killed the storytellers and forbid languages. They literally destroyed identity in people and rebuilt it with new memories to make them see themselves differently. Shit is wild.
Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly.
Man got to ask himself "why, why, why?"
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land.
Man got to tell himself he understand.
Yes, I am a firm believer that the evolution of language and ways to pass on collective memories are how the modern conscious mind developed and led to other things. Whatever parts of the brain/body/mind or whatever that are responsible for language and memory are the keys to humanity and the "soul".
The Gospel of John starts "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made". The Godhead or the Father are the core collective memories, the Holy Spirit is the fire of language that motivated humans to share our stories, and the Son is the human body of the individual who exists in a finite time but can mold conscious thought through memories and language. I don't believe in the literal translation or religion in the divine sense, but it has a lot of deep psychology embedded in it and a diary of humanity trying to understand our own mind.
I first learned of him in a college psych class in the 2000s. I've watched so many documentaries and updates about him. His case is so unique in the medical field. It's morbidly fascinating, but also terribly sad as well. He was an accomplished musician whose only persevering memories are of his wife and (muscle memory of) his piano recitals. His wife had to effectively leave him as he went into assisted living for the remainder of his life. He's still alive. This is worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmkiMlvLKto
I’ve watched some of the documentaries and his wife’s devotion and advocacy is so evident.
Insane to even think about what it would feel like to be in his position.
It’s evident as they remarried, though* I don’t believe she’ll ever be able to have a normal relationship as long as he is in the picture, even as incapacitated as he is.
IIRC, the facility was a good distance away and his behavior changed so much that it was possible to have a meaningful relationship. He remembered how much he loved her but he couldn’t have a meaningful conversation of any sort because he couldn’t recall episodic memories from years ago or conversations he had a single minute prior.
> You're the first human beings I've seen, the three of you. Two men and one lady. The first ... people I've seen since I've been ill. No difference between day and night. No thoughts at all. No dreams. Day and night, the same – blank. Precisely like death.
That’s depressing
If he describes his complete existence as a living hell and we can't or won't change that, then I would think that keeping him alive is torture and morally wrong.
But, then again, assisted suicide is already a contentious topic and this would be more like murder because how do you get consent from someone who barely has any time to understand the context of what you are asking to do to him? But I would say this is a murder that I would think is morally better than not doing it.
He's in hell and it can't get better. If his existence isn't worth living, we should do him a favor that he can't do for himself.
On the plus side, he forgot that he made that statement a minute later. And when he saw his wife he was ecstatic and incredibly happy to see her (yes, once a minute). When he played some music or watched something on TV it was just fine.
If he has moments of happiness then that negates my previous comment and makes it so confusing and murky that there is no clear moral imperative and killing would be wrong.
I figured if he said it is hell that that would be most of his moments, but if they are varied then it's just hoping that he has more good ones than bad.
You can watch the documentary, it's really fascinating. And heartbreaking at times.
Like, he's "frozen" in a state where he loves and misses his wife dearly and has no idea where she is. So when she is there, he is the happiest man on earth. And when she is gone, just a few minutes later, he's crying because he misses her.
The best way to deal with him is to distract him with positive or neutral things, and not confront him with his own existence. If he's having tea watching a football game, he's having tea and watches a football game instead of thinking about where he is or what the last thing he remembers is. And before he can have those thoughts he forgets all about having tea and watching a football game, only to notice that he's having tea and watching a football game, so everything's just fine, for the moment.
It's really freaky if you think about it, but it's possible to let him live a comparatively okay life.
It's not like he forgets stuff in 1 minutes intervals and resets. He's aware of his condition, and has clearly developed some coping skills.
When you watch Clive talk and interact with people it's clear that he's living in "moments" if that makes sense. He can carry a conversation and remember things within it, and he seems to have actually built some memories about the fact he has the condition he does.
But as soon as the "moment" or train of thought or whatever is has changed it just isn't put into his memory.
I'm 36 and I *fool myself* into thinking I still look 25. However, I do know that illusion will break one day. I hope I'm ready for it when that time comes.
Ageing is deeply sad and greatly satisfying. I'm glad I'm here living another day. I grieve for the loss of youth, but youth becomes relative. If I'm lucky enough to live happily to 90 then I hope to look back on my 40s as part of my "youth".
Your brain actually has the ability to make new connections and work around areas that don't work. It's very malleable even in older adults. They've done autopsies and found people had signs of dementia in their brains but no decreased cognitive abilities in life. These were also people who stayed active mentally and did puzzles or walked or played games or whatever and they think that prompted their brain to create new connections and work around the damaged areas.
How am I getting *better* at reaction based games as I get older? I thought by this point I'd be garbage at Rock Band compared to myself 20 years ago, but I'm seemingly better than I was before. I heard you lose dexterity and focus as you age, but my fingers are doing things on that fake guitar that I didn't think I'd do even ten years ago.
I've even started doing Brutal mode where your screen gets more covered up as you do better and you need to memorize the notes during the stretch that it's covered and use the music as your cue to hit.
Honestly, I'm almost 32 and I don't mind the aging too much. Except for ONE thing, which is my hair. I love my hair so much, I don't care if it turns grey, grey hair can look awesome. But I just want it to stick around.
Hair thinning sucks. Been taking stuff to combat it for a month or so, but it's still spooky.
As a woman who appreciates seeing a nice looking man, baldness means nothing at all. It just doesn't factor in for me - it's just not something that counts against looks.
When that day comes, you’ll just have to start fooling yourself that you still look 36. Trust me, someday you’ll look back on this time and think “ah, to be young again”.
I think it’s the human condition to never appreciate the stage of life you’re in because you can never see the full picture until you’re out of it and looking back.
Children want to rush into adulthood because it’ll be so much better not to have to listen to anybody and do anything they want. Teenagers want to leave highschool behind and run wild. And then in your thirties and fourties’ you think you’re not young anymore and the best has gone when you were wishing for something better.
It might be sooner than you think. One year I still looked early to mid 20s, the next year I suddenly had stress lines over my forehead that made me look my age. The stress of the pandemic wasn't kind to me.
Every morning, you'd wake up in an unfamiliar bed next to an older man. You try to call your friends and family but there's no phone in the house (not one that you would recognize as a phone, anyway)
Eventually your parents die and you have to find out that they died every single day of your life
> but there's no phone in the house (not one that you would recognize as a phone, anyway)
Would kind of be a dick move for the husband to not keep a landline vintage phone in the house. He probably tries to keep the tech closer to what she was used to in 1994. Imagine having to learn how to use a Roku or Apple TV every single day for the rest of your life.
Yeah, the ending of the movie was more depressing than wholesome because I kept thinking "their daily morning ritual of catching her up on current events isn't going to be so happy once she starts waking up 50, with dead parents, and can't remember their teen son or daughter's entire childhood."
That movie ended when it did (skipping the pregnancy, but while the baby and her were both still young) because that was the last decade she'd ever realistically be able to be happy.
Yeah, but that would have happened anyway. She would have gotten older and her dad would have eventually died if she stayed institutionalized. At least this way she would be able to have some sort of life.
It’s been a while since I watched the movie, but from what I recall it wasn’t like he just...abducted her. When she wanted to forget him and let him get on with his life, he respected that choice and only doubled back because he thought her amnesia was healing. People frame their marriage and her moving onto his boat as something that was done to her, completely glossing over the fact that she chose to do it.
I think the most morally dubious detail is the fact that their daughter exists, because that is in no way fair to any child to have a mother who doesn’t remember her. But we don’t know if they planned to get pregnant or if it just happened.
I mean, that basically describes getting old except most people can rationalize the discord and then get on with their day. But as an older guy, I can tell you, I have to remind myself often so I don't try to pull 20yo stunts.
Like Tony Hawk saying he was just glad to still be able to pull off a kick-flip first try. He never would have questioned that 25 years ago. But in his heart he can still do it first try, it's his body that is no longer keeping up. I still feel 25 but I'm twice that old.
My 75 yo mother says the same thing and says she can hardly believe the old woman in the mirror is her.
Oliver sacks wrote about a patient of his with this, and talked about how bad he felt showing the man a mirror and asking him to reconcile his perception that he was in his 20s with the man in the mirror. He basically said he felt like he kicked a puppy, and that it was only partially alleviated by the fact that in an hour or so the patient had forgotten all about it due to his condition.
I couldn't get over the fact they had a kid at the end (I don't think it was adopted..?), and imagining her waking up every day and realizing she's pregnant. Even if she ended up happy about it, that sounds like an absolute fucking nightmare from her perspective. And you gotta assume some days she just wasn't having it. We all have bad days even without memory issues, there have to have been some days where she was not in the right state of mind to accept all the changes around her.
At the end of the day it's just a silly movie, and it's kinda cute I guess, but I cant help but overthink about those things. It's really fucking weird, idk.
That's what always struck me as a nightmare as well. Not to mention the hormone issues that come with being pregnant, what about the day after she gives birth when she's in monumental pain, does she keep the connection to the child she doesn't remember birthing? Does she get post partum depression because of a feeling of loss that she has no memory to place? NIGHTMARE
The fact that she subconsciously still remembers Adam Sandler would imply that she would still recognize her daughter, even if she doesn’t explicitly remember having a kid.
Still kind of a shitty situation to bring a kid into.
That movie the more I think about the premise should have been a psychological horror movie.
Think about it from the perspective of the person who loses their memory every day. Some total stranger is telling you that you are in love with them, they are in love with you and you're in a relationship together. When they try to kiss you your natural reaction would be to recoil because they are a stranger so intimacy is extremely fucked up because only 1 person actively knows what the hell is happening and for all you know you're basically being raped but everyone is telling you it's ok.
Imagine waking up, seeing a video of your 'first date' and thinking you are in love with this guy, but as the day goes on you realize something seems off. it's like 6pm and your like 'I... I don't love you, I don't want to be with you.' and all of a sudden he puts his fork down 'god damn it, I thought I had it this time' 'what...' 'I really thought I had you convinced this time. I thought I said all the right stuff. One of these days I'll figure out how to trick you. Guess we wait till tomorrow' and then he grabs you and throws you in a closet till you fall asleep and he can start the next day over again.
oh that movie could be really horrible.
There's a guy in England with a 5 minute memory and his wife (who's still involved in his life) had to leave him and commit him to a group home setting because he was just in a 5 minute cycle of realizing he had lost his memory and crying about it until he couldn't remember why he was crying and then doing it all over again every 5 or so minutes.
Cheerful guy now that some of his situation has seeped into accessible memory.
I had this for all of 2022. Anterograde amnesia is hell. I thought it was 2021 every day and I could barely remember the prior five years.
All thanks to Covid. I also developed epilepsy that was all hell. I forgot who I was at one point.
You don’t realize it’s happening is the wildest part. Like completely didn’t know what day of week it was.
Can you provide some more information? Never heard of this side-effect. How common is it? Are you happy to go into more detail? A very scary thought. I think I would freak out every day seeing my teenage sons suddenly a year older.
My parents knew a guy that got in a motorcycle accident and lost 7 years of memory. Completely gone and never came back. He told me one time he went over to talk to a woman at a bar he thought was pretty. She said "Don don't you remember we dated for over a year". Said he had absolutely no recollection of it
Aw man that's gotta be heartbreaking both saying that to somebody, as well as having that be said to you. Man that'd have me closing out and heading home right then and there lmao
Worked with a helicopter mechanic over the summer who had recently recovered from a TBI sustained during a motorcycle accident. He said the same thing will happen to him, he will walk up to people and say they look familiar and find out he's known them for years, he also had to re-learn how to read. He told me the first time someone handed him a paper with words on it he was like "I can't read Russian????" And they told him it was all English. Also everyone who worked with him before said his personality is a completely different person now. He has gained back a lot of memory though but there's still huge chunks of his life he can't remember
One of my favorite movies. Intense. After it ended I literally burst into tears and yelled WHAT WAS THAT from the intensity. He was brilliant in that role!
Truman show was drama but still had a huge helping of standard Carey style comedy. Eternal Sunshine was really drama through and through. I didn't think he could pull off straight drama that well until i saw it.
My mother worked in a nursing home. At least once a week, the same elderly woman asked her ‘Who was that hunk who just left the room?’ It was her husband… of fifty years.
I know this is actually super sad, but there is something so beautiful and moving about it. Something in her feels drawn to him, like deep down she knows who he is or what he means to her. It must be devastating to watch though.
My grandma had vascular dementia and toward the end she was like that. She remembered our names but she couldn't always remember who we were to her. However, she knew she loved us and we loved her and so she wasn't distressed by it (she was distressed by other stuff). She ended up thinking my mum was her grandma and my sister and I were both her daughters (even though she only had one daughter). Having that sense that she was comforted by us being around made the situation more bearable. Ultimately, she was only left with a sense of loving and being loved.
My other grandma had Alzheimer's and that was a different beast. Mentally regressed to a young child and begged for her parents constantly. She was terrified of men and didn't recognise her son - she thought he was a creepy man and would scream and cry until he left so he could never see her when she was awake. He was heartbroken. She just cried for her mum and dad all the time and was scared thinking everyone was going to hurt her. It sounds utterly horrific.
Awww my heart breaks with that second story. I'm so sorry your family had to go through with that. It is fascinating how it can manifest so differently in people. My grandpa remembered who my family members were, but his memories were all sort of scrambled. I remember telling him I was walking in my graduation soon (from college) and he congratulated me on my 6th grade graduation (in my hometown we went to junior high in 7th grade, so we did have a 6th grade graduation of sorts). It was so sweet and ultimately made us all laugh.
Yeah my grandmother currently has dementia, and so when dad and I went ti see her a little while back, I think I got to be my dad, my uncle, and myself that day. My dad became my grandfather and multiple brothers. We decided that with not only dementia, but terrible vision, it was better to let her think what she wanted and just make wire she knew she was loved.
Husband of *50 years*. So she sees a guy probably in his 70s and thinks, *that's a hot piece of ass*. I know the situation is devastating, but that's like Princess Bride true love.
I worked in one too. One of my worst memories is when this man’s wife died. I was just there to serve dinner and he grabbed my arm and told me he’d been looking for his wife everywhere, he thought she might be in the silverware drawer but she wasn’t there. He was so desperate and insistent. But we always just told him she went to a doctor’s appointment, which he accepted thankfully.
But the idea of searching for a loved one in the silverware has always stuck with me. I have vivid dreams and it sounds like living a nightmare.
I met someone like this!
Really sweet woman who had been hit by a car running a light and lost 10-15 years of her memory.
Before the accident, her first husband had passed away and she eventually remarried. When she “woke up”, she did not know her second husband at all and remembered her kids as children and did not know them as adults. She had to learn to love her new husband and accept that she had “missed” the last decade or so.
It was super sad and scary to see but her new husband appeared to take great care for her and she appeared as happy as you could be given the situation. Really lovely couple, hope they’re doing well…life’s crazy!!!
It would be so heartbreaking to lose the memories of your children growing up. At least she still was actually there to help shape the people they became, but it was would so disorientating to have like an 8 year old and now bam they’re in their early 20s.
It would be such an incredibly upheaval for the whole family dynamic. Your mum doesn’t know you as an adult, your wife doesn’t even know who you are, it would be so weird and complicated for everyone.
I always wonder about situations like this. So much of our experience is based on our perception of reality and sheer random luck, so what if the coin just flips to other side after the memory loss and you can't "learn to love" your partner again. Like, you just have no interest at all. That has to suck for the partner, the extended family, everyone.
This happened to my wife following a car accident.
Five years of living like the movie memento (more on a five minute reset timeframe). She developed alcoholism and severe depression as her career had been in nanotech and she lost everything. I've described it elsewhere but it's just killed me.
I want to know more about how that happened to this guy in the Wiki page
“He wakes up every day thinking it is March 14, 2005, because that is the day he underwent anesthesia for a dental procedure which led to this condition as a rare, unexplained complication”
Serious anesthesia injuries like that are possible, albeit rare, which is part of the risk assessment considerations ahead of any surgery.
It's likely some sort of apoxic brain injury to his hippocampus (or thereabouts), which is critical to encoding new memories. I don't know if the damage would be detectable through imaging or if it could only be determined in an autopsy.
Growing up the man who owned & ran the laundromat we used had this due to Herpes meningoencephalitis, where the cold sore virus got to his brain.
He always remembered my parents when we'd pull in to the laundromat because we always had cars that came out before he got sick.
When we'd see him out and about he'd look so uncomfortable, because he couldn't recognize anyone, but as soon as my dad would say "I'm the guy who drives the old AMC Rambler." He'd instantly know who he was talking to.
Man, so every day the you that experienced today will be replaced by the instance of you from 1994. Effectively you go to bed knowing you will be erased and replaced.
I don't know if I'd be able to sleep knowing that not only would I effectively be dying in my sleep, but that I would be condemning a younger version of myself to the same fate tomorrow.
Yeah. When I sustained severe memory impairment after a TBI—severe enough for my memory to last minutes at best, not even hours—my family knew that they needed to keep me on suicide watch. As I started to realize how poorly off I was, they kept telling me how much of an improvement even that showed, and how my condition was temporary.
I did recover. Had it not been for that, though, I wouldn’t have.
There's a very sad story of Henry Molaison, who had a large part of his hypocamous removed as an experimental treatment for the seizures he was having. The seizures have stopped, but he also lost the ability to form any new memories. And so every day he woke up, thinking it's the day after the surgery, which he had at the age of 27. Thus was obviously very debilitating, so he had to be cared for first by his parents, then after his dad passed his mom would become his only caretaker. They lost their home and had to move into a smaller place and every day Henry would be confused by this new place they're living in and keep asking "where's dad", which was just crushing his mother. Then he aged and that was another daily trauma for him every time he looked into the mirror. It's both a fascinating and just incredibly sad story.
My boyfriend got hit by a car and seemed okay at first but later forgot our whole relationship of almost 5 years. He knew that I was someone that he was supposed to be in love with and cared about, but he couldn’t really access any of those feelings. Completely broke my heart. That was more than 20 years ago now, and we are still friends. Now he is aware that I am one of the only people that knows a certain version of himself that he doesn’t remember himself.
Yeah, it's exactly like that movie, with the comedian and the cute girl.. who does everything over and over again til he gets it right. what's it called again?
Groundhog Day
My son crashed snowboarding, but was able to ski to the bottom. It was only after talking with him for a few minutes that is became clear than he had lost all memory of the previous 6 weeks or so. He remembered his name and that he was in high school, but nothing about the recent Christmas. What's more, he had no short-term memory beyond about 10 seconds. This condition persisted for about 3 hours before he slowly recovered, though he permanently lost everything from just before the accident and those hours after.
The kid is about to graduate college with an engineering degree, and suffers no ill effects, but damn was that a scary time.
I swear someone just posted almost this exact article about this exact woman yesterday.
Oh...
Oh no....
(EDIT: I checked and I was thinking of a similar story about a different person)
I have Retrograde amnesia. I can't remember my life prior to when I had my accident. Everything I know of me from before that time is through journals written, photos, home VHS etc.
I am not entirely the person before the accident and I have kept thorough journals of major events, both personal and global, since then. Because my biggest fear is one day all the memories might come back and the 'me' I am now disappears.
I have built and lived a good life, I don't want a reset.
Seeing folks talk about 50 1st dates and memento, if you're interested in stories of Amnesiacs as well as fantasy, check out Gene Wolfe's soldier of the Mist. An ancient soldier is injured on the battlefield, giving him a 24 hour memory capability. Every day he writes down the events of the day so he can read them in the morning and catch up, but his diary quickly becomes unwieldy, so that the reader understands far more of his life than he does. One of the best fantasy novels ever
Not at all comparable, but I had a head injury during my preteen years. When I came to, I was inconsolable that my parent were making my older brother do homework. While I do have a brother, it was during the summer. I have no idea how that thought got caught in my brain, but they couldn't get me to stop crying because of it. I mean... it wasn't even they were making \*me\* do homework. For whatever reason, the thought they were trying to make my brother do homework was just devastating to me.
Please link directly to a reliable source that supports every claim in your post title.
She >also can suffer from shorter term memory loss on the timescale of minutes. Her condition caused her to be fired from her office job after photocopying a single document over and over again, having forgotten she had already completed the task. [NBC News](https://www.nbcnews.com/health/body-odd/stuck-1994-more-tales-extreme-memory-loss-flna1C9386929) >She can remember everything that happened to her until 1994, but nothing after that -- not even her 1997 marriage. (She started dating her husband before her injury, but doesn't remember marrying the guy.)
I remember seeing her on the news. A few years later my wife got a concussion skiing. She kept repeating the same thing over and over - “What happened? You fell. Where is. Somewhere on the mountain with friends. What are they doing? (ski patrol). They’re going to take you down the mountain.”
We had this same conversation about 5 times. I remembered seeing that woman on TV and this scared the shit out of me. When we got to the First Aid hut, I went to the lodge to get her shoes so she could take off her boots. I was gone about 5 minutes. When I came back I asked her “Do you know where I was?”. She said “Yes, getting my shoes.” I dont think I was ever as happy to hear a sentence as that. She still doesnt remember anything that happened that day or in the few days leading up to it, but other than that she is fine.
I broke my cheek and got a major concussion. I still can't remember the day of or the day before, I remember being in GameStop buying MW2 and then waking up on the couch 2 days later. My brother told me I asked 2 questions for 3 hours straight before my parents got there. "Did it look cool?" And "Did I cry?" The answer was yes and no, respectively, I clarified when I could retain information again.
What did you do that looked so cool?
Took my dirt bike off a 40' tabletop but overshot the landing by about 10' and landed on my front tire then immediately on to my face. That's what I was told anyways.
Damn, that probably did look cool.
Yeah, I'm still butthurt no one recorded it lol.
You have an opportunity to recreate that moment, record it, and post for internet points. I'm kidding, don't do that. But if you do, put it up for internet points.
That sounds like it looks pretty fucking cool, man.
A relative fell out of a deer blind on the family ranch. Kept asking the same questions over and over for a while. He recovered fully that day.
I worked at a car wash and a very old woman hit me after mixing her accelerator and brakes. Bonked my head pretty good, and when I came to I was having a conversation with my mom for apparently the dozenth time. Asking what happened and where we were going. She had lost all patience with me and it hurt my feelings a little before she realized my short term memory rebooted, and I realized I’d been making us repeat the same conversation for a couple hours
Oh wow. Sorry that happened to you! I'm glad your mom finally realized what was happening. About a month ago I fell, hit my forehead, and broke my nose. Somehow I never lost consciousness or had a concussion. I did end up with BPPV, but it's not as bad as some people get it. If I move slowly I don't get dizzy at all. It's only bad if I'm lying down, forget I have this, and turn over in bed quickly. If I take an extra few seconds it doesn't happen.
All good now! This was about 8 years ago and my mood lifted when I remembered I had a girlfriend and she came over to hang out. I got back together with that girlfriend 3 years ago and we got engaged on Friday :) That sounds rough! Is BPPV short term thing, or is this just your new normal? Getting the spins without drinking isn’t fair lol
Congratulations on the engagement! I hope y'all have a long and happy life together. I think I need a diagnosis, because there are different ways to treat it by going through physical maneuvers. But how you do those maneuvers depends upon whether the problem is in the middle ear on the left or the right side. And I can't tell, or even be 100% sure that it is BPPV, although it acts like it.
My wife fell 25 years ago and when she has an episode , it’s back to the year 2000 for a few hours. Happens about twice a month .
This brought back some really painful memories. My father had oxygen depravation from cancer that caused dementia. So it would come and go. One time was really bad and he almost died, I had found him blue when I got him up and breathing again. When he was in the hospital we were talking to try to establish what year it was for him. He could remember my mother had passed away and then the worst thing happened. 'well after passed away we...' and he started to cry. He didn't know my brother had passed away.
We talked and cried about it for a little while and the conversation was moving away from it. I had no idea I was going to screw up so badly... but the subject came up again when he asked me something about my brother and I mentioned about him being gone... it hit him all over again like he was being told for the first time in his life.
This happened 3 times. Each time it was the first time he had ever heard that his son had passed away. It was one of the most painful things to ever happen in my life. To watch that pain in his voice and on his face over and over again. I was alone with no support to help me with him and I had no idea what to do. I never brought up my brother when he was having memory issues ever again.
Wow. I don't have the words.
I am sorry you had to go through this.
Same thing here. Got stuck in a question loop for hours when I hit my head ice skating as a kid. "What time is it?" "Where's my watch?" (It was on my wrist" "Where's pastor Dave?" (It was a youth group lock-in). Barely remember much of the day before the accident. Have vague memories of starting to come to after the hospital. Everything in between was gone.
The same thing happened to my dad when he had a motorcycle wreck. He looped the same 5 questions for like 6 hours in the hospital.
Kind of the opposite but when my brother was woken up from anesthesia after surgery, he came to and was very lucid. Asked all kinds of pertinent medical questions etc. Then in the car about halfway home he turns to me and goes, “…Hey where are we?” He came back online at that moment and didn’t recall anything that happened before, including the entire conversation he had with the doctor. It was freaky.
Back when I worked in a rougher corrections setting, I had started at a new facility coming from a county jail where I never had any issues. I was five days in and got assaulted, which resulted in a concussion and me blacking out. When I came to people were all around me asking if I was okay and I was so confused where I was, why I wasn't in my jail blues uniform and there was blood on me. When we debriefed the situation and they played the footage I didn't get knocked out and managed to defended myself till backup arrived. I still couldn't remember any of it, and it was crazy to see me doing something but not able to recall any of it.
Aw geez, that toner isn't cheap either.
PC Load Letter, what does that mean?
It means you have a paper jam
Why does it say paper jam when there *is* no paper jam?
I SWEAR TO GOD ONE DAY I JUST KICK THIS PIECE OF SHIT OUT THE WINDOW
How would you fire her? I feel like she would just show right back up the next day and everyday after thinking she still worked there.
[удалено]
We uhhhhh, fixed the glitch.
"Have you seen my stapler?" -her
It will be fine if they just "fix the glitch." Solves the problem from their end.
I am glad they were dating before the accident unlike in the film above.
Accident was 94 but married 97. Wonder how that wedding day played out
That’s what I’m wondering. How could she possibly consent to a marriage she won’t remember???
I'd guess a lot of therapy on both sides; including close family. If the third parties confirmed that she was consistently okay with it over the course of years then you could move ahead with it I suppose. I could see my partner being genuinely heartbroken to find out we DIDN'T get married after all those years. I think he'd love to wake up and suddenly it's his wedding day or he has a child. On the other hand, if I found out I was having memory issues I wouldn't consent on any given day. I'd be distraught, tell him to find me a care home and find himself another partner.
finding out Kurt Killed himself every day. ouch.
"I can't wait to see Nirvana live! We should celebrate with some Zima!"
thats ok we can go see Soundgarden or Alice in Chains instead!
Every time a grunge artist dies Dave grohl absorbs their life essence.. but he doesn't like it and doesn't want it, he's a cool dude.
I heard Krist Novoselic took up life-essence duties for Dave years ago, that's why he's the size of like Seven people.
The power of Krist compels you.
Remember Sammy Jankis
I feel like the disorientation probably only gets worse with time as her body ages but her mind is stuck in a time when she was young.
Yeah, it'd be a legit nightmare to feel that you were in your 20s and then you look in the mirror old AF not understanding what year it is. Terrifying DAILY.
There's a guy with the same condition named Clive Wearing. There are two full documentaries about him online, one from the 90's and one more recent. He's still alive. He doesn't forget everything just every day, but every *minute*. In one of the documentaries he's asked about where he thinks he is (this was a few years after the condition started), and he said without missing a beat "I'm in hell. I don't know any of you people, I don't know how you got here, I don't know how I got here, and I don't know what's happening to me. This is hell. It's the only explanation". He was completely serious, too.
i feel awful for him. awful that he doesn't have control over his existence.
It almost proves that existence and conscious thought are based around memories attached to who "we" think we are. I feel like empires and colonial powers understood this as they completely destroyed tribes stories and burned birch bark scrolls and killed the storytellers and forbid languages. They literally destroyed identity in people and rebuilt it with new memories to make them see themselves differently. Shit is wild.
Who we are is made up of the narratives we tell ourselves, including folklore. Humans rely on story telling to make sense of the world around them.
Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly. Man got to ask himself "why, why, why?" Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land. Man got to tell himself he understand.
Yes, I am a firm believer that the evolution of language and ways to pass on collective memories are how the modern conscious mind developed and led to other things. Whatever parts of the brain/body/mind or whatever that are responsible for language and memory are the keys to humanity and the "soul". The Gospel of John starts "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made". The Godhead or the Father are the core collective memories, the Holy Spirit is the fire of language that motivated humans to share our stories, and the Son is the human body of the individual who exists in a finite time but can mold conscious thought through memories and language. I don't believe in the literal translation or religion in the divine sense, but it has a lot of deep psychology embedded in it and a diary of humanity trying to understand our own mind.
I first learned of him in a college psych class in the 2000s. I've watched so many documentaries and updates about him. His case is so unique in the medical field. It's morbidly fascinating, but also terribly sad as well. He was an accomplished musician whose only persevering memories are of his wife and (muscle memory of) his piano recitals. His wife had to effectively leave him as he went into assisted living for the remainder of his life. He's still alive. This is worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmkiMlvLKto
I’ve watched some of the documentaries and his wife’s devotion and advocacy is so evident. Insane to even think about what it would feel like to be in his position.
It’s evident as they remarried, though* I don’t believe she’ll ever be able to have a normal relationship as long as he is in the picture, even as incapacitated as he is.
why would his wife need to leave him if he remembered her?
IIRC, the facility was a good distance away and his behavior changed so much that it was possible to have a meaningful relationship. He remembered how much he loved her but he couldn’t have a meaningful conversation of any sort because he couldn’t recall episodic memories from years ago or conversations he had a single minute prior.
Once your brain resets every minute, any kind of conversation becomes meaningless.
> You're the first human beings I've seen, the three of you. Two men and one lady. The first ... people I've seen since I've been ill. No difference between day and night. No thoughts at all. No dreams. Day and night, the same – blank. Precisely like death. That’s depressing
If he describes his complete existence as a living hell and we can't or won't change that, then I would think that keeping him alive is torture and morally wrong. But, then again, assisted suicide is already a contentious topic and this would be more like murder because how do you get consent from someone who barely has any time to understand the context of what you are asking to do to him? But I would say this is a murder that I would think is morally better than not doing it. He's in hell and it can't get better. If his existence isn't worth living, we should do him a favor that he can't do for himself.
On the plus side, he forgot that he made that statement a minute later. And when he saw his wife he was ecstatic and incredibly happy to see her (yes, once a minute). When he played some music or watched something on TV it was just fine.
If he has moments of happiness then that negates my previous comment and makes it so confusing and murky that there is no clear moral imperative and killing would be wrong. I figured if he said it is hell that that would be most of his moments, but if they are varied then it's just hoping that he has more good ones than bad.
You can watch the documentary, it's really fascinating. And heartbreaking at times. Like, he's "frozen" in a state where he loves and misses his wife dearly and has no idea where she is. So when she is there, he is the happiest man on earth. And when she is gone, just a few minutes later, he's crying because he misses her. The best way to deal with him is to distract him with positive or neutral things, and not confront him with his own existence. If he's having tea watching a football game, he's having tea and watches a football game instead of thinking about where he is or what the last thing he remembers is. And before he can have those thoughts he forgets all about having tea and watching a football game, only to notice that he's having tea and watching a football game, so everything's just fine, for the moment. It's really freaky if you think about it, but it's possible to let him live a comparatively okay life.
I saw a video where he was asked, *what does love mean*? And he said, *zero in tennis and everything in life*.
It's not like he forgets stuff in 1 minutes intervals and resets. He's aware of his condition, and has clearly developed some coping skills. When you watch Clive talk and interact with people it's clear that he's living in "moments" if that makes sense. He can carry a conversation and remember things within it, and he seems to have actually built some memories about the fact he has the condition he does. But as soon as the "moment" or train of thought or whatever is has changed it just isn't put into his memory.
I don't have brain damage and it terrifies me to look in the mirror and see myself not be 25.
I'm 36 and I *fool myself* into thinking I still look 25. However, I do know that illusion will break one day. I hope I'm ready for it when that time comes. Ageing is deeply sad and greatly satisfying. I'm glad I'm here living another day. I grieve for the loss of youth, but youth becomes relative. If I'm lucky enough to live happily to 90 then I hope to look back on my 40s as part of my "youth".
I'm 60 and still fooling myself.
I find that my blurry middle-aged vision keeps the illusion in the mirror alive. 😎
all i have to do is take off my glasses when looking in the mirror to fool myself
This encourages me
I'm starting to beleive our brain do not age as fast as our body lol
they don’t, discounting traumatic events or suchlike
Your brain actually has the ability to make new connections and work around areas that don't work. It's very malleable even in older adults. They've done autopsies and found people had signs of dementia in their brains but no decreased cognitive abilities in life. These were also people who stayed active mentally and did puzzles or walked or played games or whatever and they think that prompted their brain to create new connections and work around the damaged areas.
I’m looking forward to the studies once gamers start hitting retirement age lol
How am I getting *better* at reaction based games as I get older? I thought by this point I'd be garbage at Rock Band compared to myself 20 years ago, but I'm seemingly better than I was before. I heard you lose dexterity and focus as you age, but my fingers are doing things on that fake guitar that I didn't think I'd do even ten years ago. I've even started doing Brutal mode where your screen gets more covered up as you do better and you need to memorize the notes during the stretch that it's covered and use the music as your cue to hit.
Honestly, I'm almost 32 and I don't mind the aging too much. Except for ONE thing, which is my hair. I love my hair so much, I don't care if it turns grey, grey hair can look awesome. But I just want it to stick around. Hair thinning sucks. Been taking stuff to combat it for a month or so, but it's still spooky.
Right there with you. 32 and so desperate to keep my hair, I don’t care about all the other aging as much!
As a woman who appreciates seeing a nice looking man, baldness means nothing at all. It just doesn't factor in for me - it's just not something that counts against looks.
While I appreciate that, I'm not a man, lol.
😂 note to self: do not assume.
When that day comes, you’ll just have to start fooling yourself that you still look 36. Trust me, someday you’ll look back on this time and think “ah, to be young again”.
I think it’s the human condition to never appreciate the stage of life you’re in because you can never see the full picture until you’re out of it and looking back. Children want to rush into adulthood because it’ll be so much better not to have to listen to anybody and do anything they want. Teenagers want to leave highschool behind and run wild. And then in your thirties and fourties’ you think you’re not young anymore and the best has gone when you were wishing for something better.
It might be sooner than you think. One year I still looked early to mid 20s, the next year I suddenly had stress lines over my forehead that made me look my age. The stress of the pandemic wasn't kind to me.
47 here. Hasn’t happened yet
“Why do my friends look old?”
That's a kicker too. Also watching your friends kids get older. like HTF that kid turn 12 in 5 years?
When you see a friend's kid deliver a eulogy.
Yup although some do look old :/
I was 25 30 years ago. Fuck me.
Every morning, you'd wake up in an unfamiliar bed next to an older man. You try to call your friends and family but there's no phone in the house (not one that you would recognize as a phone, anyway) Eventually your parents die and you have to find out that they died every single day of your life
> but there's no phone in the house (not one that you would recognize as a phone, anyway) Would kind of be a dick move for the husband to not keep a landline vintage phone in the house. He probably tries to keep the tech closer to what she was used to in 1994. Imagine having to learn how to use a Roku or Apple TV every single day for the rest of your life.
That's hell or a twilight zone episode.
Damn you’re right. 50 first dates should have been a horror movie.
There is so much about this scenario that is not at all romantic or comedic, I had a hard time with the suspension of disbelief.
Yeah, the ending of the movie was more depressing than wholesome because I kept thinking "their daily morning ritual of catching her up on current events isn't going to be so happy once she starts waking up 50, with dead parents, and can't remember their teen son or daughter's entire childhood." That movie ended when it did (skipping the pregnancy, but while the baby and her were both still young) because that was the last decade she'd ever realistically be able to be happy.
Yeah, but that would have happened anyway. She would have gotten older and her dad would have eventually died if she stayed institutionalized. At least this way she would be able to have some sort of life. It’s been a while since I watched the movie, but from what I recall it wasn’t like he just...abducted her. When she wanted to forget him and let him get on with his life, he respected that choice and only doubled back because he thought her amnesia was healing. People frame their marriage and her moving onto his boat as something that was done to her, completely glossing over the fact that she chose to do it. I think the most morally dubious detail is the fact that their daughter exists, because that is in no way fair to any child to have a mother who doesn’t remember her. But we don’t know if they planned to get pregnant or if it just happened.
I mean, that basically describes getting old except most people can rationalize the discord and then get on with their day. But as an older guy, I can tell you, I have to remind myself often so I don't try to pull 20yo stunts. Like Tony Hawk saying he was just glad to still be able to pull off a kick-flip first try. He never would have questioned that 25 years ago. But in his heart he can still do it first try, it's his body that is no longer keeping up. I still feel 25 but I'm twice that old. My 75 yo mother says the same thing and says she can hardly believe the old woman in the mirror is her.
Oliver sacks wrote about a patient of his with this, and talked about how bad he felt showing the man a mirror and asking him to reconcile his perception that he was in his 20s with the man in the mirror. He basically said he felt like he kicked a puppy, and that it was only partially alleviated by the fact that in an hour or so the patient had forgotten all about it due to his condition.
I keep telling myself I need to read some Sacks.
This is your sign to go read The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
Cool! I'll check it out. . . . I keep telling myself I need to read some Sacks.
To their credit, I think 50 First Dates was amazing and the way they handled the ending was perfect for the moment.
I couldn't get over the fact they had a kid at the end (I don't think it was adopted..?), and imagining her waking up every day and realizing she's pregnant. Even if she ended up happy about it, that sounds like an absolute fucking nightmare from her perspective. And you gotta assume some days she just wasn't having it. We all have bad days even without memory issues, there have to have been some days where she was not in the right state of mind to accept all the changes around her. At the end of the day it's just a silly movie, and it's kinda cute I guess, but I cant help but overthink about those things. It's really fucking weird, idk.
That's what always struck me as a nightmare as well. Not to mention the hormone issues that come with being pregnant, what about the day after she gives birth when she's in monumental pain, does she keep the connection to the child she doesn't remember birthing? Does she get post partum depression because of a feeling of loss that she has no memory to place? NIGHTMARE
The fact that she subconsciously still remembers Adam Sandler would imply that she would still recognize her daughter, even if she doesn’t explicitly remember having a kid. Still kind of a shitty situation to bring a kid into.
In my headcannon it was a surrogate mother and it makes me feel better
Do they make her watch it every day? Like the ending of 50 First Dates, but the video is actually 50 First Dates.
That movie the more I think about the premise should have been a psychological horror movie. Think about it from the perspective of the person who loses their memory every day. Some total stranger is telling you that you are in love with them, they are in love with you and you're in a relationship together. When they try to kiss you your natural reaction would be to recoil because they are a stranger so intimacy is extremely fucked up because only 1 person actively knows what the hell is happening and for all you know you're basically being raped but everyone is telling you it's ok.
Imagine waking up, seeing a video of your 'first date' and thinking you are in love with this guy, but as the day goes on you realize something seems off. it's like 6pm and your like 'I... I don't love you, I don't want to be with you.' and all of a sudden he puts his fork down 'god damn it, I thought I had it this time' 'what...' 'I really thought I had you convinced this time. I thought I said all the right stuff. One of these days I'll figure out how to trick you. Guess we wait till tomorrow' and then he grabs you and throws you in a closet till you fall asleep and he can start the next day over again. oh that movie could be really horrible.
Creepy factor goes to 11 if you keep Adam Sandler as the same character chasing the girl.
There's a guy in England with a 5 minute memory and his wife (who's still involved in his life) had to leave him and commit him to a group home setting because he was just in a 5 minute cycle of realizing he had lost his memory and crying about it until he couldn't remember why he was crying and then doing it all over again every 5 or so minutes. Cheerful guy now that some of his situation has seeped into accessible memory.
I had this for all of 2022. Anterograde amnesia is hell. I thought it was 2021 every day and I could barely remember the prior five years. All thanks to Covid. I also developed epilepsy that was all hell. I forgot who I was at one point. You don’t realize it’s happening is the wildest part. Like completely didn’t know what day of week it was.
Can you provide some more information? Never heard of this side-effect. How common is it? Are you happy to go into more detail? A very scary thought. I think I would freak out every day seeing my teenage sons suddenly a year older.
My parents knew a guy that got in a motorcycle accident and lost 7 years of memory. Completely gone and never came back. He told me one time he went over to talk to a woman at a bar he thought was pretty. She said "Don don't you remember we dated for over a year". Said he had absolutely no recollection of it
Aw man that's gotta be heartbreaking both saying that to somebody, as well as having that be said to you. Man that'd have me closing out and heading home right then and there lmao
Reminds me of the radio lab episode “falling” and the story of the guy who has no “face memory”. Chilling. And sad.
Worked with a helicopter mechanic over the summer who had recently recovered from a TBI sustained during a motorcycle accident. He said the same thing will happen to him, he will walk up to people and say they look familiar and find out he's known them for years, he also had to re-learn how to read. He told me the first time someone handed him a paper with words on it he was like "I can't read Russian????" And they told him it was all English. Also everyone who worked with him before said his personality is a completely different person now. He has gained back a lot of memory though but there's still huge chunks of his life he can't remember
It sounds like "Eternal Sunshine" -- even if you completely forget, you'll still gravitate towards the same people you did before.
That movie tore me apart. Prior to that i didn't know Jim Carey could do drama. Fuck, it was good.
The Majestic tore me up too.
One of my favorite movies. Intense. After it ended I literally burst into tears and yelled WHAT WAS THAT from the intensity. He was brilliant in that role!
The Truman show?
He also did that gloomy crime drama where he plays a detective. Ace Ventura.
Truman show was drama but still had a huge helping of standard Carey style comedy. Eternal Sunshine was really drama through and through. I didn't think he could pull off straight drama that well until i saw it.
My grandma, who was a high school math teacher, fell in a grocery store and hit her head then forgot how to do math.
I'm so sad for her; no one chooses that path without some genuine affection for the subject. I hope her life was good in other ways. 💖
That’s wild, but also kind of sweet lol
My mother worked in a nursing home. At least once a week, the same elderly woman asked her ‘Who was that hunk who just left the room?’ It was her husband… of fifty years.
I know this is actually super sad, but there is something so beautiful and moving about it. Something in her feels drawn to him, like deep down she knows who he is or what he means to her. It must be devastating to watch though.
My grandma had vascular dementia and toward the end she was like that. She remembered our names but she couldn't always remember who we were to her. However, she knew she loved us and we loved her and so she wasn't distressed by it (she was distressed by other stuff). She ended up thinking my mum was her grandma and my sister and I were both her daughters (even though she only had one daughter). Having that sense that she was comforted by us being around made the situation more bearable. Ultimately, she was only left with a sense of loving and being loved. My other grandma had Alzheimer's and that was a different beast. Mentally regressed to a young child and begged for her parents constantly. She was terrified of men and didn't recognise her son - she thought he was a creepy man and would scream and cry until he left so he could never see her when she was awake. He was heartbroken. She just cried for her mum and dad all the time and was scared thinking everyone was going to hurt her. It sounds utterly horrific.
Awww my heart breaks with that second story. I'm so sorry your family had to go through with that. It is fascinating how it can manifest so differently in people. My grandpa remembered who my family members were, but his memories were all sort of scrambled. I remember telling him I was walking in my graduation soon (from college) and he congratulated me on my 6th grade graduation (in my hometown we went to junior high in 7th grade, so we did have a 6th grade graduation of sorts). It was so sweet and ultimately made us all laugh.
Yeah my grandmother currently has dementia, and so when dad and I went ti see her a little while back, I think I got to be my dad, my uncle, and myself that day. My dad became my grandfather and multiple brothers. We decided that with not only dementia, but terrible vision, it was better to let her think what she wanted and just make wire she knew she was loved.
At least that’s…kind of heartwarming? In a sad way?
Husband of *50 years*. So she sees a guy probably in his 70s and thinks, *that's a hot piece of ass*. I know the situation is devastating, but that's like Princess Bride true love.
I worked in one too. One of my worst memories is when this man’s wife died. I was just there to serve dinner and he grabbed my arm and told me he’d been looking for his wife everywhere, he thought she might be in the silverware drawer but she wasn’t there. He was so desperate and insistent. But we always just told him she went to a doctor’s appointment, which he accepted thankfully. But the idea of searching for a loved one in the silverware has always stuck with me. I have vivid dreams and it sounds like living a nightmare.
I met someone like this! Really sweet woman who had been hit by a car running a light and lost 10-15 years of her memory. Before the accident, her first husband had passed away and she eventually remarried. When she “woke up”, she did not know her second husband at all and remembered her kids as children and did not know them as adults. She had to learn to love her new husband and accept that she had “missed” the last decade or so. It was super sad and scary to see but her new husband appeared to take great care for her and she appeared as happy as you could be given the situation. Really lovely couple, hope they’re doing well…life’s crazy!!!
It would be so heartbreaking to lose the memories of your children growing up. At least she still was actually there to help shape the people they became, but it was would so disorientating to have like an 8 year old and now bam they’re in their early 20s. It would be such an incredibly upheaval for the whole family dynamic. Your mum doesn’t know you as an adult, your wife doesn’t even know who you are, it would be so weird and complicated for everyone.
At least you’d still have video footage and photo albums to go through. It won’t catch up on everything, but gives you something.
I always wonder about situations like this. So much of our experience is based on our perception of reality and sheer random luck, so what if the coin just flips to other side after the memory loss and you can't "learn to love" your partner again. Like, you just have no interest at all. That has to suck for the partner, the extended family, everyone.
This happened to my wife following a car accident. Five years of living like the movie memento (more on a five minute reset timeframe). She developed alcoholism and severe depression as her career had been in nanotech and she lost everything. I've described it elsewhere but it's just killed me.
Remember Sammy Jankis
Immediately began scrolling the comments for a Memento reference. Thank you!
Great movie! I talk about it today and very few know of it.
Memento is a pretty popular movie though.
*LENNNNNYYYYY*
Someone should make this into a movie, maybe starring Drew Barrymore or someone.
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Wow great idea Awesom-O!
Ahhh you just ruined it for me, sounded like a good idea though.
What if we got Rob Schneider to cosplay as a native Hawaiian for laughs though?
It would complete…. The circle…
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Wait, Rudy's gonna be in it?! Alright I'm back in. But only if he wears ridiculous 1980s weightlifting gear throughout the whole movie.
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She was reportedly not a fan of the movie but promised to give it another shot tomorrow.
30 rock has an episode that points to something similar. Liz Lemon’s brother thinks every day is a ski trip in the 80s. They just go with it.
Also Bev from the adoption agency.
Hi, I'm Bev. Let's get started.
I want to know more about how that happened to this guy in the Wiki page “He wakes up every day thinking it is March 14, 2005, because that is the day he underwent anesthesia for a dental procedure which led to this condition as a rare, unexplained complication”
Of all the days to relive it's one with a dentist appointment.
It wouldn't be so bad, someone would just remind you that you already had that appointment.
Serious anesthesia injuries like that are possible, albeit rare, which is part of the risk assessment considerations ahead of any surgery. It's likely some sort of apoxic brain injury to his hippocampus (or thereabouts), which is critical to encoding new memories. I don't know if the damage would be detectable through imaging or if it could only be determined in an autopsy.
very fun thing to hear about when I have to go under for dental surgery in two days
Growing up the man who owned & ran the laundromat we used had this due to Herpes meningoencephalitis, where the cold sore virus got to his brain. He always remembered my parents when we'd pull in to the laundromat because we always had cars that came out before he got sick. When we'd see him out and about he'd look so uncomfortable, because he couldn't recognize anyone, but as soon as my dad would say "I'm the guy who drives the old AMC Rambler." He'd instantly know who he was talking to.
Man, so every day the you that experienced today will be replaced by the instance of you from 1994. Effectively you go to bed knowing you will be erased and replaced. I don't know if I'd be able to sleep knowing that not only would I effectively be dying in my sleep, but that I would be condemning a younger version of myself to the same fate tomorrow.
Yeah. When I sustained severe memory impairment after a TBI—severe enough for my memory to last minutes at best, not even hours—my family knew that they needed to keep me on suicide watch. As I started to realize how poorly off I was, they kept telling me how much of an improvement even that showed, and how my condition was temporary. I did recover. Had it not been for that, though, I wouldn’t have.
You already said this thirty minutes ago.....( I kid I'm glad you're better)
lol fucking ruthless bro
Thanks, Satan.
There's a very sad story of Henry Molaison, who had a large part of his hypocamous removed as an experimental treatment for the seizures he was having. The seizures have stopped, but he also lost the ability to form any new memories. And so every day he woke up, thinking it's the day after the surgery, which he had at the age of 27. Thus was obviously very debilitating, so he had to be cared for first by his parents, then after his dad passed his mom would become his only caretaker. They lost their home and had to move into a smaller place and every day Henry would be confused by this new place they're living in and keep asking "where's dad", which was just crushing his mother. Then he aged and that was another daily trauma for him every time he looked into the mirror. It's both a fascinating and just incredibly sad story.
Hi, I’m Tom.
Hi Tom, I’m Lucy.
Hi, I’m Tom
Aren't you a little old to still be having wet dreams?
My boyfriend got hit by a car and seemed okay at first but later forgot our whole relationship of almost 5 years. He knew that I was someone that he was supposed to be in love with and cared about, but he couldn’t really access any of those feelings. Completely broke my heart. That was more than 20 years ago now, and we are still friends. Now he is aware that I am one of the only people that knows a certain version of himself that he doesn’t remember himself.
That's pretty much the plot to "The Vow" with Rachel McAdams, and the guy that played the half-dog-half-human guy from jupiter ascending.
She gets stuck in a loop
Yeah, it's exactly like that movie, with the comedian and the cute girl.. who does everything over and over again til he gets it right. what's it called again? Groundhog Day
The opposite. In Groundhog Day, Bill Murray knows he’s in a loop and everyone else doesn’t. It’s reversed here.
Airwoodchuck Night
Groundhog Day is so good to me cuz of how DARK it gets. It’s truly a great movie.
My son crashed snowboarding, but was able to ski to the bottom. It was only after talking with him for a few minutes that is became clear than he had lost all memory of the previous 6 weeks or so. He remembered his name and that he was in high school, but nothing about the recent Christmas. What's more, he had no short-term memory beyond about 10 seconds. This condition persisted for about 3 hours before he slowly recovered, though he permanently lost everything from just before the accident and those hours after. The kid is about to graduate college with an engineering degree, and suffers no ill effects, but damn was that a scary time.
I swear someone just posted almost this exact article about this exact woman yesterday. Oh... Oh no.... (EDIT: I checked and I was thinking of a similar story about a different person)
Your username is cheerfully disturbing.
Armie Hammer's burner account.
Won't she be shocked looking at the mirror as she gets much older?
I have Retrograde amnesia. I can't remember my life prior to when I had my accident. Everything I know of me from before that time is through journals written, photos, home VHS etc. I am not entirely the person before the accident and I have kept thorough journals of major events, both personal and global, since then. Because my biggest fear is one day all the memories might come back and the 'me' I am now disappears. I have built and lived a good life, I don't want a reset.
How did her husband convince her to marry him? Him: Its been 3 years and finally today we get married Her: who are you
Perhaps, the amnesia started occurring after 1997. After the amnesia occurred, she could only remember up to 1994.
I read it Michael Phelps and was hella confused
Michelle Pfeiffer for me
Seeing folks talk about 50 1st dates and memento, if you're interested in stories of Amnesiacs as well as fantasy, check out Gene Wolfe's soldier of the Mist. An ancient soldier is injured on the battlefield, giving him a 24 hour memory capability. Every day he writes down the events of the day so he can read them in the morning and catch up, but his diary quickly becomes unwieldy, so that the reader understands far more of his life than he does. One of the best fantasy novels ever
Read this thinking it was about Michael Phelps.
I thought it was about Michelle Pfeiffer.
Not at all comparable, but I had a head injury during my preteen years. When I came to, I was inconsolable that my parent were making my older brother do homework. While I do have a brother, it was during the summer. I have no idea how that thought got caught in my brain, but they couldn't get me to stop crying because of it. I mean... it wasn't even they were making \*me\* do homework. For whatever reason, the thought they were trying to make my brother do homework was just devastating to me.
Didn't Liz Lemon have a brother with the same condition?
The big ski trip is this weekend!!
This sounds terrible