I Forgot to Remember: A Memoir of Amnesia Read Online Free Page A

I had to ask him that because you were always such a rambunctious daredevil.” (I have since heard stories of my childhood escapades—tumbling off trampolines, plummeting headlong out of trees, and careeningdown steep hills in wagons.) Mom continues: “And I just remember Jim saying, ‘I need your help, it’s really serious this time.’ ”
    There is a moment from that evening when Jim recalls sitting alone in the waiting room. Waiting. He watched the sunset out the window and gazed across the newly developed area of suburban Fort Worth. “My mind was racing, trying to think of anything and everything that could be done,” he remembers. “This was before the Internet. All I had was what was between my ears.” And as he sat there thinking, it struck him how alone he and I were. My parents and younger brother were in Houston, four or five hours away. His family was in Georgia. “There was this profound sense of dread and loneliness, or aloneness,” he recalls. “There wasn’t anything to do, and yet there was a huge motivation to do something.”
    Because there was nothing else to do, and Jim was tired of sitting, he pestered the duty nurse every few minutes. Finally, a physician emerged. He told Jim that I was stable but comatose, and partly paralyzed on my left side. Fluid was pressing against the inside of my skull, but if doctors attempted surgery to relieve the pressure, there was a good chance the pressure would cause my brain to burst. Not a happy thought. The doctor explained that the brain floats in fluid, and a sac holds it in place, sort of like a parachute. The impact of the fan, he said, had set off a chain of events: The front of my brain had struck the front of my skull, and then it had bounced back, and the back of my brain had struck the back of my skull. The doctor continued, “Imagine if you ever put Jell-O in a fridge, and you take it out and you shake it, and there’s cracks in it. That’s what happened to your wife’s brain.”
    Then he told Jim that there was nothing more he could do, which Jim didn’t appreciate. “I’m a systems engineer. We systems guys fix stuff. There are always things you do, and if one thing doesn’twork, you do the next thing.” It was just inconceivable to Jim, and frankly, he found it irresponsible that they would do nothing. It seemed like a cop-out. It was as though they were only worried about covering their asses rather than doing something in order to help me. Jim got hot. He lost his temper and became verbally abusive. He says he can remember distinctly challenging the doctor and nurses, screaming at everyone: “What do you mean you can’t do anything? What is your medical degree worth? Because right now you’re doing nothing.” He doesn’t remember what else he said. “To their credit, they didn’t have me arrested. And in retrospect, it’s the only reason you are still alive, because they did nothing.”
    A decision was made to move me from Harris Methodist Southwest to Harris Methodist, a sister facility in downtown Fort Worth with a comprehensive neurological intensive care unit. I often wonder if Jim’s ranting and raving had anything to do with why I was moved. But Jim recalls “having a feeling in the back of my head that they were overwhelmed” at Harris Methodist Southwest, and they couldn’t handle my situation. Regardless, the people working in that emergency room were probably glad to see me transferred. And Jim along with me.

    The discharge papers from the first hospital listed my condition as poor, and to Jim’s eye, I looked like I was getting worse. I was more pale and fragile-looking. The transfer was a delicate maneuver. At the downtown hospital, another very calm, very senior nurse asked Jim to recount what had happened. When the narrative got to Patrick, and to the fact that it was his little body that had struck the fan, the nurse suddenly grew alarmed. Patrick had, after all, been in the same accident as I had.