November 3, 2021
"When you don’t remember something, you have no idea of its existence. And upon awakening after the surgery, I remembered nothing."
"But it wasn’t a disorienting feeling. If I had known I was a guitarist, if I had known those two people standing by my bedside in the hospital were in fact my parents, I then would’ve felt the feelings that went along with the events. What they went through and why they were standing there looking at me then would’ve been very painful for me. But it wasn’t painful because to me they were just strangers.... I had to start from Square 1.... But once I made the decision to try, it activated inner intuitive familiarities, like a child who hasn’t ridden their bicycle for many years and tries to do so again to reach a destination. There are moments of imbalance, but it’s subliminal, and it emerges after some mistakes, and then it strengthens."
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12 comments:
you'd be surprised how many people asked me;
"what was it like, being in a coma?"
And i'd answer: "i have no idea, i was in a coma at the time"
But, when i came Out of the coma, and was recovering...
For about a month, i had No memory of ever Not being in the hospital
I didn't remember Anyone, or Anything. Eventually, my past memories came back,
but I still have memory of being in the hospital, and having That being my entire life
Eventually i remembered everything up to the day before the accident and after two weeks later, but As my memories came back, they would come back in clumps. My Friend Andy came to visit, and i took him aside and asked him;
"They say i was riding a Kawasaki, WHY was i on a Kawasaki?"
And Andy told me i'd bought the KLR-650 2 weeks before the accident...
Suddenly, i recovered memories of:
...The Sales room
...The Bike
...Riding over to Andy's house to show it off
As i mentioned to Michelle on an earlier post. Because of my Traumatic Brain Injury,
I had the pleasure of being able to read all of Robert Heinlein's works again,
without knowing how they'd end when i started (i'd usually remember the end about halfway through, but i still got the fun of wondering how Thorby was going to get of Jubbul
Wow that's a interesting story. Waking up from surgery feels kind of sort of like a resurrection. I can't imagine how disconcerting it would be to have no memory. I guess the saving Grace is no bad memories.
We know that the brain has developed to provide for multiple redundancies of associative memories that can be activated if a part of the brain that was used is lost. It must have had to do with a common need for survival due to brain injuries resulting from combat, accidents, and disease. Stories like this one reinforce this brain feature. Some day we might even know how this works, but brain research is in its infancy today. We don’t even know what parts of the brain do, which I understand is the focus of scientific research today.
Pat Martino was a great guy, and an absolutely monstrously good guitarist and muscian. RIP.
Once you get to a certain level, music as about riding your conscious mind on top of "muscle memory," like surfing a wave. Experiments with people who lose their memory every night has shown that "muscle memory" is different than conscious memory and not affected by the loss of conscious memory.
I had a patient who recovered from a cardiac arrest with no memory of her life. She was intellectually intact, just no memory. I knew her for years after. She recovered with the aid of friends but never recovered the memory.
"activated inner intuitive familiarities"
After a little I am taken in and put to bed. Sleep, soft smiling, draws me unto her: and those receive me, who quietly treat me, as one familiar and well-beloved in that home: but will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me who I am.
James Agee, Knoxville, Summer of 1915
I had an episode of “transient global amnesia” a few years ago. Remember eating lunch at the office and waking up about 9 hours later in the hospital with no understanding of how I got there. Seemed to be responding somewhat to emails and text messages during the episode. I had a phone call with one of my team mates in which the conversation was very repetitive and kept covering a couple items we had discussed earlier in the day. Concerned him enough that he called my wife thinking I had had a stroke. She showed up at the office with fire/rescue squad. I have no memory of the ambulance ride or hospital admission. To this day still not sure if some vague memories are mine or whether I think they are based on discussions with family recalling the day. Consciousness is funny......
'To this day still not sure if some vague memories are mine or whether I think they are based on discussions with family recalling the day.'
They're not your real family! (said in a Rod Serling-esque voice) : )
Here's a great video about him: Rick Beato on Pat Martino
I regret his passing though I never heard of him before.
It's strange that when the topic is a man who lost his memory after a brain aneurysm, Joe Biden's name didn't come up.
Joe may never have been that bright to begin with and age has taken its toll, but the two aneurysms he was operated for in the Eighties may have had some effect on his abilities.
Pat Martino's story -- plus Gilbar's experience -- is the most interesting of yesterday's Althouse posts, Imo. How extraordinary -- and how great thou art, whoever helped the human race attain such capabilities. But it hit on a busy day with some hot news and only got 11 comments (now 12, even though I know I am not contributing anything to it here!). I'm sure many more people read it; hopefully everybody, because it sure is a wondrous thing.
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