Trying to find the past (Mental health problems)

Member Name: sandra_dee

Product:	Mental health problems
Date:	13/03/03 (72 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: see above

Disadvantages: see above

Not sure if this is in the right section but wasnt sure where else i could put it.

This review is written to hopefully give people an insight into living with amnesia and to help people appreciate what they have, because I didn’t realise what I had until it was gone.

What was gone?

My past, my history, my life as I knew it. For those of you that have read my review on meningitis will know why this happened. But for those of you who haven’t 3 yrs ago I contracted meningitis and spent a week in a coma.

On coming out of the coma it is believed that I had lost a full 10yrs. I didn’t know I had been married (and divorced), or that I had a son. This was devastating for my parents, they had just been through the week from hell, and now they had a daughter who had no idea what was going on. But within a couple of day’s things started to come back, bits and pieces and thankfully the memory of my son. (My hero)

Now three years on many things have not returned and I’ll just have to live with it, but it’s hard. At family gatherings, someone always says do you remember when, and I don’t.

Looking at photos that I am in, so I know I was there but I couldn’t tell you when or where the photo was taken.

Both my long and short-term memory has been affected.

I have lost count of the times I set off upstairs to do things and when I get there I have no idea why I’m there. So I have to come back down. It usually take an hour or two and then I remember.

I put things down then within minutes I can’t find them. This never seems to work with bills though, however hard I try I never seem to be able to loose them.

I have lots of notes around my house to help me remember. My diary is full, even things like telling a friend I will phone them on a particular day. I have to write it down or I won’t ring.

One thing I really struggle
with is when people are out of place. At work I could tell you everyone’s name but if I see him or her in town out of uniform I’m lucky if I can remember their name. So many times people have come and talked to me and after they leave I say to whoever I’m with “who was that?” It could be someone I went to school with, worked with in the past or even work with now but I have no idea.

I registered for friendsreunited (which is a great site) but a lot of the people on the list that say they went to school with me I have no memory of.

I never thought my life could be so affected by this. You don’t realise how important you memory is until you haven’t got one or you loose big chunks of it.

Things that you talk about with friends. Places you’ve been, films you’ve seen, your favourite meal, your favourite colour. All these things I’ve had to relearn with the help of family and friends. I just hope they told me the truth! Do you need three guesses as to what my favourite film is?

Something else that has happened is that I have what I call “false memory”, when we remember an event we do this from pictures, sounds, smells, things that we create so that in the future they will remind us of the event. When someone tells me about something that has happened I do the same thing, I then cant tell the difference between a real memory and one that I have created.

There are plenty of things in life that we all want to forget our embarrassing moment’s etc but there are things that we never wanted to forget but I now don’t have much choice, they have already gone.
With the help of friends and family I’m trying to get back the important things.

Although one good thing to come out of all this is it all happened when I was 30, having lost 10 years that made me 20 years old. I could have lived my 20’s again. Umm not sure about that m
aybe I’m better the age I am.

I have typed this in another review but “something’s I remember like yesterday and sometimes I don’t remember yesterday”.

And the other thing

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference.

Every day things come back and one day I that I will have most if not all of it back.
I live in hope.

Appreciate what you have (whatever it maybe) as you may never realise how important it is until it’s gone.

Live life to the max. Life is far too short (especially when you loose big chunks of it) lol


There is probally a lot more i could have written but i've forgotten lol lol and i think i may have bored you enough by now.

Summary: