Almost 6 years post MVA

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This has been a major change in my life over the last bit. While not easy, it has been very much a positive thing.

6 years ago i had a near fatal car accident, in that accident i lost many of my memories. It also brought me a lot of stress, anxiety, depression, and other issues too. I have always had this longing to want a return of memories lost from the accident. I remembered things, don’t get me wrong. But it was like a fragmented reality which kept me awake some nights uneasy. I have always had, and do have, one single identity, one self, and one person.
Pieces of my past kept coming back over the coming days. Weeks went by and i became me again, but i stalled. I never progressed. I always knew enough, but never even had a clear memory of my childhood because of the traumatic injury. Never enough to remember a birthday, or remember being hugged ever. I didn’t remember having much for about a year.
As time continues on, i am beginning to have some of the more precious memories restored in a very detailed way like my brain decided to lock them away for a rainy day. Some days I’ve been having troubles thinking through everything because of the extreme clarity and number of returning memories that flood my mind. It is absolutely the strangest feeling in the world to remember so much so fast, it’s literally like the movies where things just fly by. You go “wait, what, that happened?”

I occasionally worry about a potential negative change from this but i always have to tell myself that the person that i am today, and the person i was yesterday, will not turn out the same. At this point i have things set up to keep me going on the right path. And to keep me safe from being harmed by my past self created problems.

I then thought more about these memories and why they may be finally coming back (beyond the obvious, time healing the brain) and i thought that even while not appearing to know each other due to a disconnection for whatever reason, my past and current are just one step away from picking up the phone and wiring themselves together and bringing many things up with one another. Which also means i can learn about old me and still become the new me without worry that i am still the old me. Because the old me didn’t use twitch. The old me didn’t do the same things. The old me wasn’t here with you.

This memory influx is as though you just hit the ocean after you’ve been driving for days. Like your car just drove straight into it, not off a cliff, but like into it from the beach, not fast, but not slow either.

I find some comical moments in it all when I realize just how much i truly do appreciate the small things and just how much more I do now that they shouldn’t mean anything at all. Why they mean anything? I have no clue, but it does. Memories are a weird thing. What someone may find to be the most uncomfortable memory, another might find comforting because it brings some closure and peace.

I wonder in what ways others on here can express The feeling of a reunification of memories from the previous, or otherwise known, self to the current self? It seems to be hard to find anyone to share it with. I have a hard time explaining it to more than medical professionals and i wish sometimes people could feel the joy that can come with just remembering something.

To put it another way. It is like i always knew exactly who i was, what was going on and everything. I have never been more than 1 single person, just have had fragmented memories. I’ve had the cliff notes. Now I’m just starting to look through the pages a bit. After all, traumatic brain injuries can improve for up to 10 years which, for me, gives me hope.

Thanks for your time, and for reading my post.
You are loved, you matter, and you are cared for greatly!

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You have been through a really tough and disorienting experience. I had some suppressed memories come back to me after I became adult. The memories did help me to understand why I had issues with depression and anxiety. They also had me questioning my identity. Beyond that, I wondered who I might have been, had I not experienced such hardship. Of course I can only speculate, but spending a lot of time thinking about the issue is pointless.

Most of my memories are intact, as are the residual effects of early childhood conditioning. I can’t help but wonder who I might have been, if I had a more favorable past.

In your situation, those memory gaps are potentially instrumental in helping you to figure out who you are in the present, rather than identify with past negative influences. Even if you end up remembering all of your past, you will have had time to get to know yourself from a perspective that is quite unusual, but beneficial.

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@Wings thank you for replying, i really appreciate it

This is something i have been thinking a lot about. It is of great use to me to get to reorient myself through life when i can step back, analyze it in a more detached way, and then reintegrate. I feel as though i should write a book about just this feeling of returning memories so i have been journaling again just about memories which isn’t like me. I haven’t always been journaling the memories. Just what brings about the memories. If it’s music, movies, something my wife says, a piece of clothing. Whatever it is, i write it down.

I noticed yesterday that one thing that is helping me remember is that i used to wear super bright yellow and other florescent colored shoes before my accident, and now i have rainbow tie-dye crocs that have a base color of yellow which is giving me similar moments but also some deja Vu but i can pick that out that deja Vu moment as a recently restored memory from years ago where i did a very similar thing.
Another thing i did was to be straight and honest with my wife that i wanted her to do something special for me, which I look at every day. I have a video of her saying “I love you” right to me. I play that video so much.
It might not have been my wife, i could have had a friend, or parent say it and it would have meant a lot too. It helps unlock a unique, good, memory each time and it is worth it.

I know it all sounds very mundane, but even my neurologist has said this is all stuff to just continue to talk out with others. So Who is better to talk it out than those who are my friends that I trust who can keep me focused on the right path when I’m feeling unsure myself. Because having my own storm clouds coming in is tough on me, and i have an umbrella and some other tools, but sometimes having you guys gives me hope knowing you are just here with me.

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It sounds like you’re making all the right moves. Yes, talk with supportive people is very therapeutic.

You might find this woman interesting. Her situation wasn’t like yours, but she does a good job revealing many of the brain’s attributes and how it’s perceptions can change.

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@wings you are awesome, thank you so much for that video. It is a great find. The way she describes the turning off and back on of the memories it is almost dead on. That’s such a great way to describe it. Plus for some reason i like the way she finds it fascinating being a scientist and having this happen as this subject is also fascinating to me as my life as a nurse makes my issues a bit more than interesting to me beyond the struggles discussed above and into the previous experiences as a nurse which were traumatic. as I don’t know how many people were able to have the ability to have some education before having an issue, i don’t know if it gives a different outcome with any type of trauma. I do wonder sometimes if it caused some more trauma because i was more aware of what was going on during the coma. (I remember pieces of when i was in the coma post MVA which was confirmed to me)

The link between mental health and physical health are such a slim margin i think that no matter what happens in life it is all one big holistic approach that makes the difference for everybody. She talks about schizophrenia and the underlying functions causing schizophrenia, which even though I’ve seen some of the research before, is always a great refresher.
I wish I could have her in a lecture. What an interesting view she would have in a discussion

Thank you so much!

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I do think education, or simply the habit of curiosity and synthesis of available information really does make a difference. I had a close friend who developed Alzheimer’s. She had a PhD, and was retired from a career in forensic psychology. She also maintained interest in spirituality and Buddhism. I took care of her in her home for as long as I could, but eventually, she had to go into assisted living. Fortunately, she had enough money to be in a decent place.

I was deeply impressed by her ability to gracefully accept what was happening to her. I believe her store of knowledge and wisdom, although fading, helped her to maintain peace of mind. Interestingly, even with cognitive decline, she led meditation groups and learned to play guitar. She was living proof of the value in not anticipating a disease trajectory, based on prognosis, or what people believe typically happens. I never saw her anxious, or asking “why is this happening to me?” We had fun talking to each other, even after all she had left was “word salad.” Finally, she just went to sleep and didn’t wake up.

I am a nurse too, currently retired but maintaining my license, because I might want to work again. I did psychiatric, hospice and home health nursing. Often, it was hell, but also touching, heartrending and rewarding. I suppose I could write a couple of books :slight_smile:

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Thank you so much for all the support @wings. I really appreciate how you are bringing the relatable experience of your friend who had a PhD. It is such a great thing. I am glad that i have a bad day here and there but the good days outweigh the bad, and the bad days were more at the very beginning of this flood of memory return. It could also be that self-perception of bad versus good is different. How hard one has to work to reach their goals can be part of what makes it difficult.
I can only imagine how much meditation and playing the guitar has helped your friend. I know myself i have been meditating for a long while. I also have been trying out some home music therapy for about a month and a half now with a surprisingly good success but i do need someone with more knowledge of music therapy to help me at this point because it’s not that it’s completely plateaued but i know there’s more i can achieve once i find someone with more specialized music neuropsychology.

I also have been doing more writing and imagery around it and have been considering writing a creative fiction book but i am not a good writer and can not write dialogue well which gives me more want to do it. I tend to write directed writing but can not write well with imagined dialogue. I have had a clarity of completeness of mental imagery again for bit now and i can grasp the full concept of where stories go but I no longer can quite imagine what goes on, but i can state fact, connect dots, perceive big picture and much more i haven’t been able to for years with much higher accuracy than I have even been able to at times when i was younger in life.

Some days I’m amazed at what it’s like to go through this all in the blink of an eye after memory return. My wife loves me dearly and is probably the only person i know of that can support me and also at very least appreciate that through so many of these small oddities i never realized before that may seem mundane went from what I once perceived as cruddy thing to a generally positive situation over time. Such Going to a zoo and having the most fun of the day when it downpours because it reminds me of so many times I hated life before and it would have hurt, but who cares if i get soaked, i have my family with me. That does not work without the memories being there to work through and be reminded of the blessings in life now.

I can only imagine the stories your can write. You have no idea just how much you helped me out, i mean like no idea. Thank you beyond words, this conversation with you probably had been more useful to me than most others I’ve had.

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I am so glad that my words helped you. Not everyone takes the time to express appreciation. That was very thoughtful of you.

Your thoughts about writing remind me of that old joke, “how do you get to Carnegie Hall?” The answer, practice practice practice! I don’t think very many people start off being good writers. The more you write, the better you will become at writing. One of my professors had us do an exercise where we wrote as fast as we could, not worrying about punctuation or anything about sentence structure, but simply capturing our thoughts and putting them on paper.

More than half of my reading is science-fiction. It is a great venue for sharing deep thoughts and social commentary. There is also a lot of humorous science-fiction, which also speak to the human condition, often quite profoundly. Anyway, just start writing and see what happens. Some people outline story then fill in the details. Others imagine a scene or concept and build the story around it. It also looks like some people start several stories or books at once, then build connections between them.

Reading is very helpful in learning how to write. Reading to absorb the material is a bit different than doing it to observe the writing style. I spent a lot of time paying attention to how writers cause an image to form in the reader’s mind. Reading poetry and haiku is also very helpful. It might also help to verbalize what you are trying to convey before writing it down. Imagine sitting in a room with the reader, and just telling him what’s going on. I think I got a lot out of reading Mark Twain. Sometimes relating a single detail can set the mood. For example “after starting the water running for shower, Sam noticed a big clump of hair stopping the drain.” It’s easy to imagine how Sam must have felt in that moment.

Frequently, authors depend on others to proofread, correct grammer, and take note of contradictions in the storylines. Even if your writing is rough around the edges, there are ways to tweak it, and people who can help. Something else to consider, is even if no one ever reads your writing, the process itself is beneficial to the mind.

You can state facts, and connect dots, by creating the facts you wish to state. Say the forest is the big picture. Now imagine a path. Is it narrow? Are there tree roots crossing it? Are there slippery wet leaves in spots? Are there mosquitoes?

In other words, see the big picture, then place yourself within it.

I think you could create a really enjoyable story about your rainy day at the zoo, and how the experience helped you to appreciate where you’re at in life now.

Whatever you do, don’t do it if it doesn’t feel like fun. If it’s only fun for five or 10 minutes at a time, that’s all the time you should spend with it.

I admire you for the amount of good your deriving from such a negative experience. It inspires me!

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Joe,

What a bizarre reality. To be “catching up” with yourself.

I think there is a particular beauty in the surrender of it all. That you have to allow yourself to be where you are. To just…accept it. Because that’s all you can do.

In the bit that I know you there is some kind of gem in there knowing that it would slow any sense of furious ambition. That the coolness of the present moment, being tethered to it from something beyond your control, would offer relief from the burning speed of your future oriented mind.

And…some salve for pain in the past. Not knowing can be some sense of relief.

All of that mixed with the sense that…yeah it’s fucking bizarre to be walking through life and “wrecked” by trapped memories resurfacing. But also, like you said, it can be a hard reset of gratefulness. “Wow, thank you for this incredible gift.”

I think you are walking this with an open handed posture that is inspiring to me. Thank you for sharing your story.

-Nate

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