Sunday 27 June 2021

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.

 Comments Closed 

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I’m glad she’s OK.
Maree

Anonymous said...

Also glad she is okay. I have a quick question...any chance that she has has the covid vax?

1735099 said...

We both have about six weeks ago.. I put that question at the hospital and was told by the neurologist that there was no connection. Neither of us had any side effects.

C.L. said...

Glad to hear Mrs 1735099 is OK. That can't have been any fun.
Best wishes to you both,

Winston said...

Now that is scary. I've seen a couple of cases of TGA and the worst thing about it is the 'not knowing what I did' part.
At least all she did was go shopping.
Perhaps if you speak to the people who were on that day, they may be able to give your wife some closure that she didn't do anything silly...

1735099 said...

Thanks CL.

1735099 said...

Winston
She was very concerned about that, often repeating "Did I do anything weird?" to the point where I wrote "You didn't do anything weird" on the whiteboard in her hospital room.
A phone call to her friend (the one she went out with on the day) helped fill in the memory gaps. That has reassured her, but there remains a lost twelve or so hours.

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