This sort of memory loss is known as retrograde amnesia which eliminates any memory of events prior to the accident. It may only be for the preceding couple of minutes, hours or days rather than the more unusual extensive period that my partner experienced rear ended in florida. When he became more aware, after ten days in a medically induced coma, he thought it had been 10 years in the past. He had no recollection at most of his accident and had lost 10 years of his memory.
This is a traumatic experience for me, as I'm sure it had been for him because during this ten year amnesia period, his wife had died and we met one another only three years prior to his accident. When I visited him, there have been times he knew my name and other instances when I asked him if he knew who I was he avoided my question. But even if he seemed to learn my name, I don't think he had any real knowledge of what our relationship designed to him. Even with he have been from the hospital for almost a year and appeared to own recovered nearly all of his memory of this ten year period, he admitted he had no accurate realization of what our relationship have been like prior to his accident. This is very disconcerting.
This period was a learning experience for him. When I asked him how old he was, he gave me age he would've been 10 years previously. There were many friends who visited he didn't recognize including some he had known for twenty plus years. He had no memory of the newest home we'd moved into, still thinking he lived where he had for several years prior. He also had no memory of the entire year or label of car he drove instead telling me about one he had driven years before.
He discussed people in his past I had never heard about like these were current friends. I began an experiment of asking him to greatly help me make up an inventory for our 'welcome to your new home' party. Every one of his first suggestions were people who were mostly unknown to me. The 2nd time we did the experiment a couple of weeks later, the list was made up of some people that I knew and others that I didn't. On the 3rd try, the list was more or less who'd normally have now been on the list.
Through the six to eight week period before he gradually began to consider some of this lost time frame, I brought pictures into the hospital of family and friends, pictures of our new home, things from our home that I hoped might jog his memory and albums showing different trips we'd taken together.
As he began to consider a couple of things, it seemed he was making up stories. In actual fact, when someone has suffered retrograde amnesia, they'll often fill out the blanks in stories when they can't quite remember the entire story.
It's difficult to state whether my partner does remember sets from that ten year period or not since I can't verify most of it. Some of his memory may, in reality, be made up to replace what he can't remember.
My partner also endured anterograde amnesia which is memory loss immediately following an injury. Nonetheless after three and a half years post injury, he has no memory of his accident. He even offers very little memory of some of his four month hospital stay. Survivors of brain injury will usually have difficulty remembering anything new. In cases like this new events or learning new things will often not get into the long-term memory bank. Because of this they might become discouraged from doing anything they aren't already familiar with.
For those individuals experiencing these types of memory losses, it must be like living in a fog - they know it's there but it's just beyond their grasp.
Sylvia Behnish has published her first non-fiction novel entitled "Rollercoaster Ride With Brain Injury (For Loved Ones)" which tells of these journey along the road of progress during the entire year following her partner's brain injury. Her first fiction book entitled "His Sins", a three generation family saga, is born out early in the newest year. She in addition has had numerous articles published in newspapers and magazines in both Canada and the United States.