Scene 15 (beginning) - I Don't Remember

********Scene 15 (beginning) - I Don't Remember************

I remember the first memory I remembered.

See, my recovery at Geisinger Medical Center was progressing rapidly, so they moved me to Magee Rehabilitation Hospital in Philadelphia,
and that’s where my memory returned.

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I’m going to take this entry to pause on this moment - not a full scene, but just a moment in this scene…


“I remember the first memory I remembered…”


There is half a month of my conscious life wiped out of my mind after the accident.  I remember saying “goodbye” to my French teacher, and then I remember what occurs in the upcoming scene (a future blog entry) - which takes place 2 and 1/2 weeks later.  Thus, there is an extended blip in my personal timeline - like I was asleep - yet what intrigues me is that during the majority of this time, I was conscious.  After my 5 days in a coma, I was interacting with the world around me and operating with a full set of memories about the people with whom I was interacting - my family and friends.  What’s more, I was forming new memories concerning the doctors who were treating me and demonstrating at least some understanding of my situation.

Yet I have absolutely no memory of this.  All my time at Geisinger Medical center - there’s nothing.

And when my ability to sustain memories returned, there was no grand moment of revelation - no “Holy Shit, I can remember now!” - yet for some reason, my mind/soul/consciousness/being/WhatHaveYou picked this instant to press the record button on my personal timeline.

No idea why.

I’m not suggesting I want to remember these moments of early, conscious recovery - I’m sure there was a host of pains and anxieties that I can’t begin to comprehend prior to record being pressed, and I feel rather fortunate that I don’t remember.

There is a scientific explanation of internal processes beginning due to traumatic situations - Glucocorticoids being produced during a trauma which override the Hippocampus (the core memory system) in our brain - for survival purposes, our bodies don’t want to relive memories of extreme suffering, so these memories tend to get erased.  Please recognize, my explanation is grossly simplified, and I did find at least one paper that goes into the science of it (http://www.jneurosci.org/content/24/37/8161), but as a non-professional, it quickly becomes techno-babble - you, however, are welcome to go though this more detailed research and if you want to try to better explain it to me, please leave some comments and we can arrange a meeting/Skype.

As of yet, however, I haven’t found information that explains why our brain chooses particular moments to turn the memory back on.  Nor have I learned of any set of objective conditions that will trigger such a reaction - in truth I doubt that there is a way to document any objective conditions during a subjective experience of a trauma.

I also don’t know why, when I was at Geisinger hospital and surrounded by my close knit community of family and friends, my mind/soul/being choose not to remember.

I don’t have answers - only questions.

But its interesting.

Thoughts?  Please share below.