I Forgot to Remember<\/a> is an unsettling book. \u00a0Su Meck, at the age of 22, lost her memory in a freak accident in 1988, a very Hollywood-style total amnesia (which she and\/or her ghostwriter tells us is in fact extremely rare). \u00a0But unlike a Hollywood tale, she struggles for many, many years subsequent to that accident. <\/p>\nA young mother with two children at the time of the accident, she is reduced to the intellectual capacities of a small child herself. \u00a0Her \u201cmuscle memory\u201d is intact \u2014 she can still ride a bike \u2014 but she not only doesn\u2019t remember people and events of her past, but she doesn\u2019t remember fundamental aspects of daily living. \u00a0She has a limited vocabulary and not only doesn\u2019t know the names for everyday objects but doesn\u2019t know how they\u2019re used and has to be taught, for instance, how to eat with a fork and knife. \u00a0Her reading and writing ability is reduced to that of a first grader, and she simply doesn\u2019t understand how to go about everyday life.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s worse, she\u2019s on her own. \u00a0She is released from the rehab center after she has recovered physically because no one seems to understand how severe her mental deficits are, even herself. \u00a0And her husband returns to work and leaves a toddler and a preschooler in her care, even though the preschooler is so precocious, and she so disabled, that he takes care of her more than the reverse, in many ways. \u00a0(Why did her husband not understand how dangerous it was to leave to small children in the care of someone who was reduced, in many ways, to the level of a child herself? \u00a0She speculates that he was so young himself, only 24, that he didn\u2019t really understand the gravity of the situation.) \u00a0Later, her husband changes jobs and travels the majority of the time, and, when he\u2019s home, yells at her for being \u201cstupid.\u201d<\/p>\n
For a long stretch of time, her short-term memory is impaired as well \u2014 at first she simply doesn\u2019t remember anything from one day to the next, and later she continues to have episodes in which she forgets where she is or what she\u2019s doing. \u00a0And even after her short-term memory improves and she\u2019s able to build memories again, she continues to be baffled by the world around her, for example, when her husband moves the family overseas for an assignment and she has no idea what it means to be overseas. \u00a0She spends two decades gradually learning to pretend to understand, hiding her deficits from everyone around her, including her severe inability to read and write. \u00a0Only after her youngest child is ready to leave for college, and after a confrontation with the inconsistently-supportive, always-gone husband, does she herself return to college, beginning with remedial courses in which, bit by bit, she regains the academic knowledge and understanding of the world that she had been missing.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s disturbing to see that, according to her reconstruction of events based on medical records, her doctors and therapists, in the aftermath of her accident, failed to give her the help that she needed, and seemed to brush aside warning signs that she was not remotely competent, and to see how adrift she was in the years that followed. \u00a0Has the medical profession improved in its understanding of head injuries since then? \u00a0One hopes so. \u00a0Of course, it would have helped if he husband wasn\u2019t such an a** (and there\u2019s a revelation about him towards the end of the book and ultimately something of a reconciliation), since he should have known that she needed help, right?<\/p>\n
Bottom line: \u00a0this was definitely in the category of \u201ccan\u2019t put it down.\u201d \u00a0I\u2019d say \u201cwell worth the money,\u201d except the only expense comes if I don\u2019t return it on time!<\/p>\n
(Why don\u2019t I buy books? \u00a0Because I can\u2019t manage to part with those I already have, and we don\u2019t have any bookshelf space left. \u00a0I suppose after my youngest is done with picture books, that\u2019ll clear up some space!)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So usually when I do these \u201cfrom the library\u201d posts, it\u2019s a book on politics, but this came from the memoirs section. I Forgot to Remember is an unsettling book. \u00a0Su Meck, at the age of 22, lost her memory in a freak accident in 1988, a very Hollywood-style total amnesia (which she and\/or her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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