The incredible, strange, turbulent hour that I lost

St. Boniface

I lost an hour of my life in May when I was struck by a rare neurological disorder called transient global amnesia (TGA).

My bizarre hour began when I decided to cut off a 20-foot limb from our 20-year-old apple tree.

I zigzagged a bow saw on the bulky limb at a quick pace until it fell to the ground.

After that thud, I can only share what family members later described to me.

I turned to my wife and asked at least a dozen times, “Who cut this branch?”

She thought I was being melodramatic, no idea that my short-term memory was deserting me, each happening evaporating from my memory as quickly as it was being forged.

She directed me to the back yard to get some rakes and leaf bags for raking work I planned to do. When I didn’t return, she walked to the back yard and found me staring straight ahead in the middle of the yard.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“The rakes?”

I pulled two rakes from a bin and slowly followed her to the front yard.

There, I dragged the rake across the grass once, stopped, and dropped it.

“I don’t know what I’m doing.”

I have zero memory of any of this.

My wife brought me inside the house and implemented a FAST-stroke test. Pass. Heat exhaustion perhaps? She handed me a cold glass of water and applied a cold compress to my head.

Worst case scenarios — stroke, brain bleed, aneurysm, seizure — filled her head. Family members began appearing at the house after she sent a concerned text.

Every immediate moment seemed to vanish — if I was drinking coffee, which room I just left, a conversation with a family member, recent news items, even why ten leftover chip bags from my son’s wedding social the night before were piled on the dining room table.

I found myself in an ambulance driving to the Health Sciences Centre when I inexplicably snapped out of my daze.

“What am doing here?” I said, staring at two paramedics.

After a long day in the HSC and a busy follow-up week completing a CT scan, extensive blood work, and an MRI, results were “unremarkable,” according to a neurologist, who said he “gets one or two patients a month, usually in their 60s, with classic TGA.”

Was this a sign of dementia? A stroke? A heart attack? An epileptic seizure?

No. No. No. No.

Little is known about TGA. Why did my short-term memory vanish while long-term family names continued intact? Why is physical exertion a frequent trigger (like tree-cutting)? Could it happen again?

Thankfully, most TGA episodes are one-offs and short-lived, but for about 60 minutes, I literally lost an hour that I would never get back.

Learn more about TGA at my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21028-transient-global-amnesia