Simple answer. I was cycling to my part time job as a barman in Soho, when I crashed outside the Castle pub on Clapham Common. I woke up on the operating table being sewn together, 13 stitches in head 2 in lip (no anaesthetic! F***ing painful) Unconscious for 3 days and sent home where I slept for 6 weeks. I returned to work but over time discovered problems with my memory. Then nearly three years later after discovering an address book in which I knew no one I saw a specialist who tested me and diagnosed anterograde, retrograde, episodic and autobiographical amnesia. Too late to make any additional recovery. It was a relief because I was setting fire to dinner all the time, so had a reason and could now adapt.

Thanks for clearing that up, sounds unbelievable!

Now there is a lot more but that will be in the autobiography.

Have you seen the Michael Mosley series about psychology. You may find the last episode interesting.

I am lucky. 25 years ago much the same happened to me. Hit shunted off a bike by a car and woke up in A&E being stitched together. I jet have scars on my foregeadcand chin, not anything like you have.

I have not seen that series.

As for scars, The forehead scar is hard to see, though for three years it was bright red. The one on the top lip ( a one inch tear) is invisible, though 8 hours on the operating table for two stitches. I have to say I am very impressed no one has ever noticed anything.

I have to admit I find memory the most fascinating part of psychology (or neuropsychology to be specific). It's one of the bits of the brain where we think we know how it works but we can't really conclusively prove anything and thus people are always finding new things or proposing new theories. Most of the research in the area is done with people like Amnesia10, who have suffered head trauma and then their memory systems somehow stop working as they should. I doubt any doctor in the world could say with any confidence exactly what damage was done to his brian that has caused him to have the problems he has - memory seems to be one of the systems that is distributed throughout the brain, almost to try to make it resilient to damage.

I don't wish to pry and I certainly don't wish to make you feel like a test subject but I do have one question - did the tests you had after your problem became evident include a CT or NMR scan? Did they find any signs of damage in any specific area? The current theory is that 'memory control' is something to do with the frontal lobes...

Jon

I had a CT scan, and there was nothing out of the ordinary. An enlarged right Tricorn but that was it. I did a series of tests and was found to do really well at some and really badly at others. It was diagnosed as diffuse brain damage. As for doctors on average they will only see one amnesiac during a 120 year career. So I never bother them about it. I know more about the condition that they would. It is manageable in the right circumstances. Notice boards, filing cabinets, computers. Possessions act as an aide memoir as well. I avoid dangerous things like cooking, ironing. Even all these years later I still have not worked out what can be remembered, but the more bizarre it is the better. The biggest problem is how others react to it. As Big D will attest if you were to talk to me you would never know that I had a memory problem or any problem at all. So I do get accused of faking it. Though considering i have had test ten years apart and they were identical would either mean perfect memory or a genuine case. There are other tests that can determine whether the person is lying about memory loss and I gave passed that one to confirm my condition.

The most frustrating thing is that if I am talking to someone and have a thought and try and talk, and get a "don't interrupt let me finish" response I have to decide do I ignore what they are saying, to instead remember what I want to say, or listen to them and forget what I was going to say. If I listen then they say "Now what were you going to say?" I have no idea what I was thinking. Then the "If is important it will come back" line is used that irritates me because it rarely does and I am then unable to add anything to the conversation.

I had got married and was the father to a daughter (the first of 3).
Had moved to N.Ireland and was working in a warehouse in Banbridge .Was slowly getting used to life here where shops were shut on Sundays as were cinema's,leisure centres & just about anything else you take for granted now.

At Easter & the marching season the whole of N.Ireland seemed to shut down just like some old backwater preacher town
I could never get used to that.....

The check points,the marches in protest of the Anglo-Irish agreement & the increased violence from the paramilitaries made me wonder why i ever moved

Thank god things changed



yours wecrookie

I was mostly cruising through my O' levels, and had fully developed my "stay away from me you creepy geek" approach to romance.
Beer was 80p a pint at my local.