
The Temporary Memory Lapse of Transient Global Amnesia - danso
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/16/well/mind/the-temporary-memory-lapse-of-transient-global-amnesia.html
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themodelplumber
This happened to a friend of mine. He was just sitting on his recliner
watching sports and poof. Boy did he get angry while experiencing the TGA
symptoms. All of us were really concerned for his wife, who suddenly had this
person without a "normal" working memory to care for. Fortunately the episode
was really short, even if it did involve a long ambulance ride and a stay at
the hospital.

Given the circumstances, mostly the timing of the events and the external
pressures on him to address some big stressors on a given schedule, I guessed
that stress was a key contributor in his case. Doctors seemed to want my
friend to focus on that aspect.

This particular friend tends to keep things bottled up, and then grows more
emotional as events arrive and progress. It's hard to watch, and I've tried to
approach the _topic_ of approaching it with him, with little luck. But it has
been a good lesson to me: Even if you think you are OK and life is great,
continue venting information about stressors regularly. Personally I regularly
word-dump into a journal or into my phone for health purposes. My journaling
template[0] has evolved a lot over the years and it's still one of my top
tools for moderating stress. The stress will always be there, but it seems
that, perhaps depending on circumstances and individual psychology, one can do
_enough_ of this kind of work to avoid some major stress-related health
issues.

[0]: [https://pastebin.com/YmjnhaXp](https://pastebin.com/YmjnhaXp)

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Shinkei
As a neuroradiologist, I see these cases occasionally. People presenting with
TGA sometimes have small infarcts in their hippocampus.

An example paper you can read if you are curious:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5894321/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5894321/)

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roca
Something like this happened to me. My wife and I were in a serious car crash;
we were almost entirely uninjured, but I apparently lost the ability to form
new memories for several hours. I also temporarily forgot some older memories
and permanently forgot almost everything that happened over the past 36-ish
hours. The doctors checked me VERY carefully for brain injury, including a CAT
scan (so I'm told!) but couldn't find anything, not even a surface bruise.
Professionals I have met over the years have hypothesized either a
psychological effect due to shock or some minor, hard-to-detect internal brain
damage just from it sloshing around inside my skull.

The most interesting part, for me, was that while I was in hospital I was
visited by a guy I'd met for the first time the previous day, during the lost
36 hours. I instantly remembered his name but was also quite sure I'd never
seen him before. That was weird.

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joshmn
If anyone has any questions about Transient Epileptic Amnesia I'm happy to
share my first-hand experience with it. It's very similar to TGA (was actually
diagnosed with TGA first) though there are some subtle differences:
environmental memories tend to lapse, brief unresponsiveness, some form of
recall is possible, hallucinations are common, and the duration is typically
much shorter.

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ctack
Happened to my mother after a hot bath. GP knew the score and so I took care
of the for the few hours that it lasted. It was quite endearing in the end
with her having no idea how she got to be where she was and every couple of
minutes expressing her concern about and questions about it.

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mirimir
Huh, my first thought was TGA while peaking on LSD. Or after too much alcohol.

But then I thought about zolpidem, which I take every day. I've pretty much
gotten used to the idea that I won't remember much of anything after it takes
effect, until it wears off, perhaps four hours later.

I always lock computer screens, before taking it.

