Memory triggers

[Daniel]

I was in town today and, after leaving the gym, I went in search of an inner city business I have an appointment at tomorrow when they'll help me find a career path or suggest a form of training leading to employment condusive to my lingering deficits. I found the place in order to make going there tomorrow less stressful/nervous - I find being able to visualize a place in my mind makes blowing it out of proportion with imagined concerns less likely to happen (eg fearing it'll have a steep set of stairs, which is still a concern of mine for vertigo).

I walked around the city and through one of the more artsy parts (ie building architecture is a little unique) and it immediately brought back a memory of an area of Hong Kong which was close to where the hospital I stayed at there. The entranceway of a part of town was similar to the hospital entranceway there and I hadn't remembered it until now.

I recall the entranceway to the hospital in Hong Kong and then I get a flash of another room - the public dining room overlooking the harbour and it reminds me of a super sized version of a harbour suburb here in my hometown of Christchurch - called Lyttleton harbour.

Describing the harbour would be beside the point, so I'll cut to the discussion and put it out to others :

Given the memory deficit aspect of encephalitis, have you encountered anything around you post infection which has brought something back which you thought was lost from your memory? Do you often get flashbacks? Do you trust that those memories are actually factual and not your mind compensating for a huge question mark by fabricating something it assumes is at least close to the real memory?

I wonder how much of what I saw/see in my mind is genuine and how much isn't. I was completely and utterly crazy when the infection took hold - I'm told that I believed I was in Europe (I had a German insurance company-sent male nurse : that's actually true) and was seeing people who just weren't there (a family member travelled overseas to be at bedside after being informed of the seriousness of my then mystery condition which was tentatively labelled as a brain haemorrhage initially).

What has come back to you which you thought was lost in your memory and do you know it's a real memory, or find it untrustworthy?

[tobecome]

Sometimes look at old photographs with others has been helpful. Or scents will stir up some memories..ie.grass being cut, rain, pine scents...I also think keep my journal, day planner helps with more recent happenings. There are times though I have to do a little research to find out what really happened. When that is the case it usually jilts a bit that I don't remember..or i didn't think something happened and was informed it did.
tish

[Daniel]

When you recall something - how does it seem compared to how you would otherwise (ie with uneffected memory) recall it? For instance, I try to recall hospital in 2005, and I can - but aspects of it are somewhat fantastic : eg the old man who had suffered the stroke in front of me seeming like something out of an artsy horror flick - not saying that his appearance was awful, but his speech was unclear and his appearance had obviously changed due to his unfortunate health turn that now I can almost see him as the poor old guy he was/is, yet back then I was somewhat deranged in my line of thinking and each day I awoke, something which had been factual about him - eg his wife who came to visit being a pleasant lady, or that the dessert he had looked better than mine - became altered as I tried to cling onto that memory and, as it left my mind, I fabricated certain things - confabulation, the neurologist called it : imagining or manufacturing memory to fill in the blanks.

So, without getting overly carried away with description of how I viewed this guy (I read my diary from back then which is how I know), I see now that he wasn't the cartoon character in a horror story life had invented starring me, a formerly self indulgent twat with narcissistic tendencies, and his wife was not a lady running an intricate conspiracy to usurp my health, he was simply an older guy who life decided to mistreat and his wife was an understandably distressed lady who was saddened upon arrival, but trying very hard to maintain her integrity - often appearing cold, when I now see she was clearly upset at what she saw in her husbands bed.

When you see a photo now from maybe a year ago, does it seem like the event took place to you only a year beforehand or much longer as the memory lacks definition like something would from much earlier on in life? It's something which I find is really hard to come to terms with - I recall studying Chinese in Christchurch city (hometown, 1st year of studies) during 2003 and I recall it very clearly, even where each person sat in the classroom (small class), yet I think back to either time in China and only images of faces, or brief snippets of moments are present - there are one or two small movie scenes in my mind, but nothing providing a substantial timeline of events which makes piecing together that time prior to falling ill nearly impossible and subject to my own interrpretation - it alters more and more over time and now I'm no longer really able to trust anything I think about from the time as it could be genuine memory or it could be made up.

It would just be nice to recall the 1st half of 2005 with the same definition I can recall 2003 or 2004 : it's hard to move on and come to terms with something bad in life happening when you don't remember it happening at all and are left to pick up the pieces nonetheless - feels like paying for the mistakes of someone completely different, because I am now completely different from before. It just feels like the change itself has been lost, and I think that's a shame.

It's interesting that you mention smells of things like grass and trees : is there any reason why you mentioned those in particular or were they just the first nouns which sprung to mind?