personal tale of the memory loss and the journey back...
In early 2023 I suffered a TIA, a Transient Ischemic Attack. With all the symptoms of a stroke... loss of speech, drooping face and muscle weakness etc on one side, my daughter called for an ambulance, but the symptoms disappeared while she was on the call. So, while indeed transient, this was a significant event in my life and a major wake-up call on health. The sound-byte here is an extract from my live chat with the wonderful Mim Hook of ABC Radio Gippsland Breakfast Show discussing my recovery.
Following overnight assessment at the local hospital I was sent on my way with an array of med's; naturally, I was feeling relieved and very lucky that it could have been far more serious, as apparently it was for so many filling the emergency rooms that night. But this relief soon turned into near despair as I started to experience a serious set of ongoing and troubling "forgetfulness" incidents.
And so started my journey back; as they say, “it’s not what happens to you but how you react that counts” which was certainly to become my own story. I very quickly learned that getting back in the saddle ASAP was key, both physically and mentally. Over the next few weeks I exercised, cleaned up my diet and sleep patterns and I found I had to really focus as much energy as possible on employing the memory techniques used by me over many decades to literally rescue my mind and foggy brain.
Just like once before, more than 50 years ago, these techniques worked to bring me back. I again went from wandering around the supermarket in a daze looking for three items on a written shopping list to be able to shop for 10, 20, 30… 50+ items and remember every one without the written list.
Naturally, I worked hard to stay healthy though diet and exercise, cutting back on alcohol, sugar, salt etc. and definitely upped the ante on mental exercises… but THE MAIN WEAPON has been application of memory techniques. I picked up a Rubik’s cube for the first time ever in March this year, finding the first stages simple enough but then applying a pictural approach to solve the final stages. So this, along with reciting scores of Pi decimal places, two areas of little interest in the past, now became useful exercises to help stretch the mind daily.
Sadly, I have found in online TIA and stroke recovery groups, memory loss seems to be a common complaint among victims, which is exacerbated by the fact that most people do not have a memory system to fall back on and are suffering for it. This is a major reason for the launch of “An Elephant Brain” memory improvement training program… short and extended programs to help adopt these techniques to easily encode and recall important information... I can help others come through this.
In summary, there are ways to enhance one's whole approach to memory Trauma or not, the ability to change the way one encodes and recalls anything can literally be a life-changing endeavour and I would encourage readers to view other articles on this site and consider the training which has been designed to be affordable and easily followed by anyone needing or wanting to improve their memory.
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