What you forget

[resonant]

A co-worker of mine recently, for no reason anyone has been able to identify, lost four hours of his life with a brief bout of what they call Transient Global Amnesia.

He can't tell me anything about what it was like, because he says it was like a bubble: while he was inside it, he apparently couldn't remember anything outside it; once he was out of it, he couldn't remember any of it happening at all.

His wife tells him he was very sweet and loving while it was happening, and in a very docile way cooperated with everything she asked him to do and believed everything she told him -- with one exception: he refused to believe her when she told him how old he was. He wasn't sure how old he actually was, but, damn it, he was quite sure he wasn't 68!

Comments

[isilya]

My periods of amnesia were drug-induced, most significantly when I had been given Midazolam as a pre-med prior to surgery, and prior to my pre-op consult with my surgeon. I woke up from my GA shouting that I couldn't go in for my surgery yet because I hadn't had my pre-op consult. It is still extremely strange to me that I had a 15 minute conversation with my surgeon and consented to the specifics of my procedure and yet have no memory whatsoever of this consult. It's made me more careful as a physician to ensure that my patients are capable of consenting.

You would be able to feel that time had passed, even if you randomly napped during the day. You may initially be slightly confused as to how much time had passed or what day it was, but you would be aware that that you had been sleeping. This varies among people but many people mark time so accurately while sleeping that they do not need to set alarms (whether or not the alarm is routine).

[resonant]

Returning belatedly to say that this is really interesting! I'm guessing that you must have behaved in pretty much the expected way during that 15 minute conversation, or else someone would have noticed that you were already going under.

Once when I was in college I woke up on the phone with my father. As I came back to consciousness, I was saying, "OK, I'll do that, love you, bye." I had to call him back and ask him to tell me what I'd been promising to do!