I Forgot To Remember: A Memoir Of Amnesia

Description

For fans of Susannah Cahalan's "Brain on Fire," the courageous memoir of a woman robbed of all her memories by a traumatic brain injury--and her more than twenty-five-year struggle to reclaim her life. At twenty-two years old, Su Meck was married with two children in 1988 when a ceiling fan in her home fell and struck her in the head. She survived the injury, but when she regained consciousness in the hospital, she didn't know her own name. She didn't recognize a single family member or friend, she couldn't read or write or brush her teeth or use a fork--and she possessed not even a scrap of memory from her life up to that point. The fiercely independent and outspoken young woman she had been vanished completely. Most patients who suffer amnesia as the result of a head injury eventually regain their memories, but Su never did. After just three weeks in the hospital, she was sent back into a world about which she knew nothing: How do you run a household when you can't find the grocery store? How do you raise children when you have no memory of being parented yourself? How do you maintain a relationship with your husband when you've forgotten everything you once knew about love and sex? Nearly twenty years would pass before a series of personally devastating events shattered the "normal" life she had worked so hard to build since the accident, and Su realized that she would have to grow up all over again and finally take control of the strange second life she had awoken to. Su's indelible voice shines through on every page as she describes the true cost to herself and her family of traumatic brain injury (TBI), and the incredible stamina, resolve, and courage it took for her to build a new life in the face of so much loss. Piercing, passionate, heartbreaking, but ultimately uplifting, "I Forgot to Remember" is the true story of a woman determined to live life on her own terms.

Reviews

"One ordinary day, Su Meck lost her memory. This is the highly unusual story of how she remembered herself--and reconciled the person she was with the world around her. Her story will surprise and engage anyone who has wondered about the role that memory plays in all of our lives."--Alexandra Horowitz, author of the New York Times bestseller Inside of a Dog