My Missing Month: A True Story of Amnesia and Killing a Guy I Never Met

There is a month of my life that I will never remember. It was the summer after my sophomore year, I was sixteen. I made plans to meet up with a friend that I had not seen since freshman year. My friend, Gene, lived in Chillicothe, Missouri, and knew I would be staying at my mother’s house in Kansas City not far from there all summer, so he invited me to come to “Chilli” to party with his friends. What I remember is meeting up with Gene and another friend of his whom I had never met, I forget his name, in the Bannister Mall parking lot, dropping my car off at my place, and jumping into Gene’s sports car headed for Chillicothe.Then I woke up on my mom’s couch in her living room. Members of my family were gathered around and paint-by-numbers canvases at various stages of completion were spread around the living room and kitchen, suggesting that everyone had been hanging around for a while.

“What happened?” I remember asking my mom.

“You were in a bad car accident,” she told me. It was five weeks later, my body was sore, my right ear was stitched back on to my head, and apparently, I had almost bled to death. My sister told me that I had asked her what happened five times a day for the past month. Gene’s friend had been driving and the car had smashed head-on into another car on the highway. The paramedics told my family that I had gotten out of the car and was walking down the highway with my right ear hanging from its lobe, my Dead Kennedys t-shirt soaked in blood. I was helicoptered to the emergency room and was in intensive care for four days. Gene had broken both his femurs and his hip bone, his friend had a broken arm and collar bone and had damaged his neck. In the other car was a couple on their way to their high school reunion. The wife had a broken nose, chin, and cheekbones, her face was smashed in during the collision. Her husband was killed.

Around five weeks were completely unaccounted for in my memory. I can relate to the quote from the text attributed to Tim Tebow, suffering a concussion after being sacked, he asked, “did I hold on to the ball?”(193). I was shocked to learn that over a month had passed during which I had been intermittently conscious, yet had absolutely no recollection of anything that had transpired. Based on what I read in chapter seven in reference to memory formation, it is safe to assume that I likely sustained damage to one or more areas of my medial temporal lobe (MTL) because I suffered from both graded, retrograde amnesia and anterograde amnesia. “Retrograde amnesia is amnesia for events that happened before the injury,” (193) and mine was graded because the events nearer in time to the trauma, such as being in the car beforehand, are absent, while memories from earlier were unaffected. “Anterograde amnesia is amnesia for events that occur after an injury (the inability to form new memories)” (193). This is demonstrated by my lack of memory for a month after the accident. Due to the trauma, “the process that transforms new memories from a fragile state… to a more permanent state” (193) called consolidation was not possible for my brain.

It has been almost twenty years since that summer, and I don’t think of it that often. When I do, I feel extremely fortunate to be alive and healthy (with both my ears), knowing not everyone that day was so lucky. I think of how fragile our brains are and how fortunate we are to have such a magnificent organ. Sometimes I think of trying to track down the woman from the accident or writing her a letter, but honestly, I don’t know what I could write. If she were standing in front of me right now, I would apologize and offer her my sincerest condolences for her loss.

-Goldstein, E. Bruce. (2008)Cognitive Psychology (Third ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

One thought on “My Missing Month: A True Story of Amnesia and Killing a Guy I Never Met

  1. Breanna Michelle Meade

    This post had me on the edge of my seat the entire time I was reading it and the title is definitely what pulled me in. At sixteen years old, I would have never thought to relate this back to my brain and how memory works. I would just be happy to be alive! Perhaps it is a good thing that you cannot remember much of what happens. In my opinion, that would be a fairly traumatic event to remember.
    Do you think that this event had an affect on your semantic memories? Obviously you have some episodic memories prior to getting in the car and can obtain new semantic and episodic memories now, but did you lose any information regarding facts or knowledge, as far as you know? I am also curious to know if you felt like the crash had inflicted any damage to other areas of your brain, such as your prefrontal cortex. For example if you ever have issues making any new memories? Or making important decisions?
    All in all, I am glad to know that you are still here today and obviously well enough to be obtaining a college education. It is unfortunate that people are lost in car accidents daily, but it is always nice to know that someone made it out and is well and healthy. It sounds like you and your friends were lucky.

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