Last night, a good friend was seemingly fine when suddenly his short-term memory disappeared. The emergency room ran a battery of tests and said it was not a stroke but probably the baffling, little known and less understood, transient global amnesia.
During an episode of transient global amnesia, your recall of recent events simply vanishes, so you can’t remember where you are or how you got there. You may also draw a blank when asked to remember things that happened a day, a month or even a year ago. With transient global amnesia, you do remember who you are, and recognize the people you know well, but that doesn’t make your memory loss any less disturbing.
Fortunately, transient global amnesia is rare, seemingly harmless and unlikely to happen again. Episodes are usually short-lived, and afterward your memory is fine.
That’s exactly what happened. Sixteen hours later he was released from the hospital and his short-term memory is back to normal. Whew.
Our minds and bodies sometimes seem so fragile yet at the same time are amazingly tough and resilient.