The emergency room doctor told us the event was benign, but there was nothing gentle about the realization that my brain had shut down my short-term memory just to survive.

There had been months of physical demands: finalizing cabin projects in time for the building inspector, hosting a family reunion of twenty-eight people and making sure everyone was safe and comfortable, the daily friction of smart spending on a budget, taking a day off from the reunion vacation to work the last day of my daycare to say goodbye to a child I loved for seven years, and the sudden shock that my book was released into the world with a missing but all-important credit. By then, the deck had been thoroughly stacked.

The odd thing was that the amnesia didn’t strike while I was carrying the load. It waited until the tasks were done and every single concern had reached positive closure.

It began with what should have been a simple errand. My husband, Andy, and I were getting ready to make lunch, and I hiked down to the camper refrigerator to grab a jar of mustard. When I walked back up to the cabin empty-handed, he looked at me and asked, “Where’s the mustard?”

A strange confusion washed over me. I forgot it?!

That was the last memory I would keep.

My exhausted nervous system took over the controls and forced a much-needed break. It simply tripped the main breaker, as if announcing: We cannot process any more input right now. We’re taking the recorder offline.

The signal dropped.

My first recorded memory after the outage came about an hour later. I knew I was with my husband in our red car. I knew we were traveling through Montreal, Wisconsin. I looked over at Andy and asked, “Are we on vacation?”

His eyes looked tired, fixed on the road. He nodded and quietly said, “Yes.”

I couldn’t quite decipher his mood. I just sensed there was something off with him.

The signal dropped.

My next memory came about twenty minutes later in the Ironwood, Michigan, hospital. When I came to, I had an IV in my arm with no recollection of where it had come from. I heard the nurse ask Andy if I had been repeating things.

“Over and over again,” he said, nodding slowly. “The same things.”

Sitting there in the hospital bed, I still couldn’t make sense of the tension in his posture. His voice carried a quiet restraint unlike anything I had ever heard in him.

The signal dropped.

The next time I had a clear moment, Andy asked for my phone to call my daughter, Jen. He wanted to make sure daycare would be covered the following day. Instead of trying to explain that it was already set up, I handed it over. When he fumbled with the passcode, instinct took over. I reached out, unlocked the screen, and dialed Jen myself. When she answered and asked if I could call her back, Andy gestured for the phone. I handed it across the bed.

The edges of the room were already softening. I couldn’t make out his words, but by then, through the few fragments I was able to capture and record, the truth was finally settling in: it was my husband who was concerned about me.

Slowly, I was becoming more aware of what was happening around me. With Transient Global Amnesia (TGA), my short-term memory didn’t come back in one quick swipe. It seemed to take hold in little bits and pieces, still wary of taking on too much.

It was close to 4:00 when all the tests were complete. My short-term memory was booted back up, and my brain was functioning normally again. Just like an electrical panel, all the switches had been turned back on.

I was discharged shortly after, with no prescriptions and no specific medical restrictions—only a suggestion to follow up with my primary doctor.

On the ride back to the cabin, I naturally started asking questions. I needed to connect the dots of the missing time.

That was when Andy told me about the repetitive questioning, using the exact same phrasing, tone, and inflection. Every. Single. Time:

“Are we at the cabin?” … pause, count to sixty …

“Are we on vacation?” … pause, count to sixty …

“What day is it?” … pause, count to sixty …

“Are we at the cabin?” … pause, count to sixty …

It was an unsettling discovery to realize that the body can function normally while relying on long-term memory. Guided by the script of the past, I simply drifted through the cabin. But without a recorder running to hold the passing seconds, time was frozen. There was nothing for one moment to connect to the next.

Looking back—and later reading the physician’s notes—I can only imagine how terrifying that afternoon must have been for my husband. The chart noted that I was anxious and crying softly, distressed by what was happening to me.

Yet I have no memory of those tears.

That strange contradiction is part of what makes TGA so fascinating—and so baffling—to the neurologists and ER doctors who study it. It is almost surgically selective, wiping out the ability to form new memories while leaving identity, complex language, motor skills, and decades of the past completely untouched. And then, within twenty-four hours, the signal returns, and it is almost as if the interruption never happened.

The cruelest part of such an episode is that the one watching can suffer far more than the one experiencing it. While my body reacted to the confusion, Andy was left carrying the weight of the unknown alone. He took on responsibilities I usually handled—talking to doctors, answering their questions, and relentlessly offering any details that might help explain my condition.

Maybe this is one of those reminders that being human, in itself, is something mysteriously beautiful. Maybe beauty and cruelty sometimes occupy the same space.

For my part, the amnesia had granted me an unintended mercy. My mind was resetting so quickly that panic never had a chance to build. There was plenty to be afraid of. But I couldn’t hold onto a single second long enough to know it.

 

Author’s Note on Transient Global Amnesia (TGA):

While TGA is rare across the general population (about 5 to 10 cases per 100,000 annually), it primarily targets adults between ages 50 and 80, where incidence rises to roughly 23 to 32 per 100,000 each year. Though alarming for loved ones to witness, the episode is benign, typically resolves within 24 hours, and has a very low rate of recurrence.