remember remember
A few days ago, Lorna and I watched a program on television that was really interesting. It was a part of a series of documentaries called 'Cutting Edge', which focuses on all sorts of issues and incidents in Britain. I've only ever seen this one episode, but it really impressed me, and I'm hoping to catch more of it as time goes on. The episode we watched was called "My New Brain", and was about a 20-year-old man named Simon who suffered a twenty-foot fall one night and woke up from a coma weeks later with no recollection of who he was at all.
It was...very strange to watch. This was a guy my age, no older than I am now, who was out drinking one night when he made a stupid decision (climbing a fence without realizing that the drop on the other side was very far) and destroyed his whole life. He was in a coma for weeks, and when he finally woke up he had terrible brain damage. He couldn't remember who he was, where he was, or what happened. He could barely remember how to speak, how to dress himself, anything. He had to go live in a special center for people with problems like his, and was a completely different person altogether. His sense of humour changed, his attitude changed, and he could barely remember anything short term OR long term.
It wasn't easy to watch, but it was very interesting. Seeing this guy, this guy just like me with the exception of one unfortunate accident, learn to live again, really shook me. With therapy and a great deal of effort, Simon began to get better, but none of it was easy. His own mother could barely accept him anymore because she just wanted her old son back, and when he was able to stay with his family for weekends or nights it was almost up to his two younger brothers to take care of him. They were much more accepting of him, not that I could really blame the mother for having trouble, and helped him dress himself and remember how things were before. One of the big changes that they really had trouble adapting to was Simon's...lack of tact, I guess you could say. Because he didn't really understand how to act with people, what was and wasn't appropriate was difficult for him to grasp. Sometimes he would go from laughing to screaming in the blink of an eye, and other times he would say cruel or somewhat sick things without understanding why people chastised him for it.
Eventually things started to change for Simon, and he began to get more and more of his short-term memory back. He was able to remember how to do things he had already done, remember what he ate the previous day, etc. He still couldn't remember anything before the accident clearly, but he still started to heal, mentally. But he still wasn't his old self, and he never would be. A year after his accident, Simon was healthy enough to move back home and live with his family again. He was a different man, and he would never be the same guy again, but he was healthy enough to learn to lead his life again, and to rediscover who he was.
I know this whole post has been a bit odd, and completely unrelated to most of the things I write about, but watching this documentary really made me think. This was a perfectly normal guy whose entire life was wiped out in one night, who had to rebuild everything he was and had. His friends didn't know him anymore, he couldn't do his old job properly, he couldn't go to University anymore, nothing. And that really made me think about what that would be like, to lose everything and everyone, and even worse, to not even remember having those things. To have no memory of any kind of any part of your life, as if you woke up one day a newborn baby at the age of twenty. I don't know about you, but that idea scares the hell out of me.
It was...very strange to watch. This was a guy my age, no older than I am now, who was out drinking one night when he made a stupid decision (climbing a fence without realizing that the drop on the other side was very far) and destroyed his whole life. He was in a coma for weeks, and when he finally woke up he had terrible brain damage. He couldn't remember who he was, where he was, or what happened. He could barely remember how to speak, how to dress himself, anything. He had to go live in a special center for people with problems like his, and was a completely different person altogether. His sense of humour changed, his attitude changed, and he could barely remember anything short term OR long term.
It wasn't easy to watch, but it was very interesting. Seeing this guy, this guy just like me with the exception of one unfortunate accident, learn to live again, really shook me. With therapy and a great deal of effort, Simon began to get better, but none of it was easy. His own mother could barely accept him anymore because she just wanted her old son back, and when he was able to stay with his family for weekends or nights it was almost up to his two younger brothers to take care of him. They were much more accepting of him, not that I could really blame the mother for having trouble, and helped him dress himself and remember how things were before. One of the big changes that they really had trouble adapting to was Simon's...lack of tact, I guess you could say. Because he didn't really understand how to act with people, what was and wasn't appropriate was difficult for him to grasp. Sometimes he would go from laughing to screaming in the blink of an eye, and other times he would say cruel or somewhat sick things without understanding why people chastised him for it.
Eventually things started to change for Simon, and he began to get more and more of his short-term memory back. He was able to remember how to do things he had already done, remember what he ate the previous day, etc. He still couldn't remember anything before the accident clearly, but he still started to heal, mentally. But he still wasn't his old self, and he never would be. A year after his accident, Simon was healthy enough to move back home and live with his family again. He was a different man, and he would never be the same guy again, but he was healthy enough to learn to lead his life again, and to rediscover who he was.
I know this whole post has been a bit odd, and completely unrelated to most of the things I write about, but watching this documentary really made me think. This was a perfectly normal guy whose entire life was wiped out in one night, who had to rebuild everything he was and had. His friends didn't know him anymore, he couldn't do his old job properly, he couldn't go to University anymore, nothing. And that really made me think about what that would be like, to lose everything and everyone, and even worse, to not even remember having those things. To have no memory of any kind of any part of your life, as if you woke up one day a newborn baby at the age of twenty. I don't know about you, but that idea scares the hell out of me.