His wife has written a book about the experience of being married to a man who suddenly didn't remember their past together. She says: "His expression and experience in the hospital was nearly angelic. He was so neutral. He didn't appear like he was suffering pain at all, and he was able to write a few words, and he kind of kept writing the same questions over and over again to me."
So he became what looked to his wife like an angel and what feels to him, from the inside, like living in the now. Meanwhile, he's had to be informed of what he's done in the past:
I mean when I read it in the story — because I've read the story several times — it kind of always makes me cry, unfortunately. But — well I don't know if it's unfortunate or not. But when I read the stuff about myself and [my son] Joshua, I honestly could not believe that that had happened. I'm not sure that I actually remember, but I was physical with him. Pushed him down to the ground and pushed him out the door and that sort of thing, and, you know, was very intimidating to him, yelling at him, screaming at him, that sort of idea.I guess he didn't have to be informed. She didn't have to write the book. If by chance, a devil becomes an angel, should the angel be told he wasn't always like this?
I'd say yes, if you want a high-quality angel. But perhaps no, if you want to protect a person who's suffered a great loss, knows it, and could be shown the mercy not adding the burden of the past, especially since he's disconnected from the past and disabled from connecting in the form of a true memory (as opposed to a memory of having heard about the thing that he doesn't directly remember).
But the son exists. Does it help the son for his father to learn what he did and (as the mother puts it) "make amends"?
Do these questions mean anything, considering that every time he learns about his past, he forgets it again, and can, at any point, opt out of the knowledge going forward? Another way of looking at it is that the wife has gone through a lot, and we shouldn't judge her for appropriating all this material to serve her interest in expression and to acquire money for the family.
Just because he woke up an angel, by chance, doesn't mean that she must herself choose to be an angel. But if she were to choose to be an angel, to match her accidentally angelic husband, should she not have written this book?
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I had a patient, I tell the story in my new book, who had a cardiac arrest and awakened with no memory. For weeks she carried around a slip of paper with her children's names on it. She had to relearn everything including what to do with common household items like toothpaste,. However, she was intellectually intact and ended up working for the hospital for years after her recovery. My wife said it would probably make a good TV movie script.
Didn't Harrison Ford once make a movie in which he gets brain-damaged, forgets what a cold-hearted jerk he's been, and turns into a wonderful human being? (Ugh.)
I'm not sure which is worse - retrograde amnesia, in which you lose your past, or anterograde amnesia, in which you're stuck on the same day over and over and over again because you've lost the ability to create new memories.
If he had truly changed and made amends before the surgery, why tell him? It's one thing if he had done something like involuntary manslaughter and needs to be aware of that for legal reasons.
Michael K.: Link to your new book?
Michael K.: Link to your new book?
Gladly. It's called War Stories: 50 Years in Medicine.
50 first dates (Drew Barrymore) covers the situation.
Also another whose title I don't remember; that solution being that the husband courted his amnesiac wife all over again, rather than relearning.
I understand that there's something called bliss dementia where the patient forgets all his painful memories. If I'm wrong about this, don't correct me. It sounds like a kind of secular paradise. Altzheimer's for the blessed. The happiest days of your life are spent in the nursing home just before the end.
Your husband, who you love, wakes up from a coma with significant memory loss.
So you write him a book about all the bad things he's done, so he can read it over and over and experience over and over the guilt and shame of it, new and fresh and shockingly painful every time.
Evil woman.
My singular exposure to dementia--long and ongoing--is that bliss accompanies memory and cognition loss to the point that an angry irascible woman becomes quite pleasant, most, if not all bad memories lost, and now living in the moment. She has minimal language and extreme word confusion.
Thank you Michael K. Your book is on my list. Commenters should take a "peek inside."
But the son exists. Does it help the son for his father to learn what he did and (as the mother puts it) "make amends"?
Oh, boo hoo. Screw the son. This guy can wake up every day and eat his favorite meal, read his favorite book, watch his favorite movie, have all his favorite experiences again, all for the first time. The boring losers he used to know need to leave him alone.
She is not only a wife but a Mother.
That imperative often far outweighs and outlasts the marriage vows. I would say that for every day she remembers her husband knocking her son around she is sewing up some amends by observing it, holding it up in contrast to this Other Possible Reality, one of angelic gentleness.
This is a gift to the son, and makes little matter to the husband.
A happy ending, I would say.
Wah wah wah don't judge me. No, don't put a ball peen hammer through her temples, but what are we if not rational animals, and rationality means judgement.
Funny how the ones who say don't judge me are the judgiest ones.
I worked in a mental hospital back in the days when electro-shock therapy was still being used. I was a psychiatric aide. What the patients told me, who hated the actual treatment but not the results, was that after the treatment they temporarily lost their memory. They did not remember all the stupid, crazy, and embarrassing things they had done, therefore they were guilt free for a short time. Theoretically, it was during this time that they were most amenable to talk therapy. Personally, I don't think you can talk somebody out of being crazy. I've tried.
ken, you might read the first chapter of my book, linked above. It is about my own experiences in a 1962 mental hospital.
As a few peope have pointed out, what is best for the son is more important than what is best for the father. If writing the book helps the son in some way, then it was the right thing to do regardless of its effect on the father.
MasterBudwing, you're thinking of "Regarding Henry." "Ugh" is a fair summary.
I knew a man who suffered an industrial accident and lost not only his long term memory - he didn't remember his wife, son, mother, or home town - but his short term memory as well. His angelic and beautiful wife stuck with him. Although for a long time he could not remember her from day to day.
I met them long after the accident, and when all this was explained to me, I asked "So for a long time an attractive blonde showed up every day, cooked you dinner, and then took you to bed?"
They acknowledged that was pretty much it.
I'm happy to report that the man has returned to normal although he has no memory prior to his injury. They remain a happy loving couple, now with many vivid memories of each other. A tribute to the power of love and loyalty.
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