Writer, M.D. by Leah Kaminsky

Author:Leah Kaminsky [Kaminsky, Leah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-94687-4
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-01-11T16:00:00+00:00

Notes

1. My ignorance. I know now that retrograde amnesia, to some degree, is very common, if not universal, in cases of Korsakov’s. The classical Korsakov’s syndrome—a profound and permanent, but “pure,” devastation of memory caused by alcoholic destruction of the mammillary bodies—is rare, even among very heavy drinkers. One may, of course, see Korsakov’s syndrome with other pathologies, as in Luria’s patients with tumors. A particularly fascinating case of an acute (and mercifully transient) Korsakov’s syndrome has been well described only very recently in the so-called transient global amnesia (TGA) which may occur with head injuries, or impaired blood supply to the brain. Here, for a few minutes or hours, a severe and singular amnesia may occur, even though the patient may continue to drive a car or, perhaps, to carry on medical or editorial duties, in a mechanical way. But under this fluency lies a profound amnesia—every sentence uttered being forgotten as soon as it is said, everything forgotten within a few minutes of being seen, though long-established memories and routines may be perfectly preserved.

Further, there may be a profound retrograde amnesia in such cases. My colleague Dr. Leon Protass tells me of such a case seen by him recently, in which the patient, a highly intelligent man, was unable for some hours to remember his wife or children, to remember that he had a wife or children. In effect, he lost thirty years of his life—though, fortunately, for only a few hours.

Recovery from such attacks is prompt and complete—yet they are, in a sense, the most horrifying of “little strokes” in their power absolutely to annul or obliterate decades of richly lived, richly achieving, richly memoried life. The horror, typically, is felt only by others—the patient, unaware, amnesiac for his amnesia, may continue what he is doing, quite unconcerned, and only discover later that he lost not only a day (as is common with ordinary alcoholic “blackouts”), but half a lifetime, and never knew it. The fact that one can lose the greater part of a lifetime has peculiar, uncanny horror.

There could be only one thing worse—and that would be to lose one’s entire lifetime. My friend Dr. Isabelle Rapin, author of Children with Brain Dysfunction: Neurology, Cognition, Language, and Behavior, tells me that very rarely, in consequence of certain brain tumors or degenerative diseases, children may develop a severe Korsakov’s syndrome. If this happens, it has been thought, they risk losing their childhood and even their infancy from a retrograde amnesia which may extend back to birth. Such children may not only become as helpless as newborns but may also become deeply “autistic” as they lose and forget all human relationships, even the most elemental—the memory of mother love.

In adulthood, life, higher life, may be brought to a premature end by strokes, senility, brain injuries, etc., but there usually remains the consciousness of life lived, of one’s past. This is usually felt as a sort of compensation: “At least I lived fully, tasting life to the full, before I was brain-injured, stricken, etc.

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