TGA

Picture courtesy ABC - Not my bride.

 June 22nd started up as a routine Tuesday. 

I went to the gym, and my bride headed out to meet a friend for coffee, something that happens most weeks. I got home first and emerged from the shower, got dressed, and heard the car draw up, but my bride didn't come into the house.

This was strange, so I went into the garage and found her standing beside the car with its back door open, looking with a puzzled expression at a bag of bits and pieces obviously bought from a nearby shopping centre. She asked me "Where did this stuff come from?".

I rummaged in the bag and found a docket that showed the items had been bought half an hour earlier at a shop that my bride frequents, but she was adamant that she hadn't bought them. 

We went inside, and she kept repeating questions like "Where have I been and how did I get here?" I phoned her friend who reported that they had parted company after a chat and a coffee, and a mention that she was going to do a bit of shopping on the way home. My bride had no recollection of any of this.

By this time I was very concerned, so sat her down and went through the stroke test that I'd learned when I did my first-aid certificate. All seemed normal, but I drove her to casualty at the hospital less than a kilometre away. There, the triage nurse put her through the same stroke test I had applied, and then when the emergency registrar tured up, he did the same. That made three stroke tests in one hour. The registrar ventured a diagnosis, (probably a bit premature at that stage) of TGA (Transient Global Amnesia). 

Then followed an admission after a bed had been found and the beginning of a series of tests across the next three days including an electroencephalogram, an MRI, a Carotid duplex, and a CT scan. She was discharged on Friday evening after an examination from a visiting Neurologist who came from the big smoke.

He endorsed the registrar's diagnosis.

My bride is back to her old self, after one day (Wednesday) when she said she felt a bit fuzzy, and all memory has returned with the exception of a gap lasting from about noon Tuesday until Wednesday morning. For her, the most frustrating consequence was being locked out of her phone because she kept punching in the wrong login sequence during her confusion on Tuesday. 

An hour on the phone with the helpful Glen from Apple online help fixed that.

It was certainly a great relief that recovery was so quick and complete, and also that there were no nasty migraines that apparently can accompany these episodes.

Typically, the origin is unknown, so we're left with a mystery. 

It was, whilst it lasted, pretty frightening.

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