Transient Global Amnesia is the inability to either retain short term memories or access long term memories. It's pretty common for the elderly and people who have severe illnesses. Typically this condition's episodes improve after 24-48 hours, but it could take longer for individuals who experience delays in healing (such as dialysis patients). The doctors think that mom's got the short term memory TGA. Sometimes she's completely sharp. Sometimes she resets after five minutes, and we have to repeat the same conversation several times. Sometimes she resets after thirty seconds. Those are the episodes that concern me the most. She asks a question. I answer it. She stands there looking at me for a few seconds, then asks the same question again. If this type of episode happens while she's in the middle of something, she gets really confused. She then has a brief period of panic, which is almost immediately replaced by anger. When she gets angry, she attacks whoever or whatever is an easy target.
She's giving the nurses so much hell this morning that they've called me twice in the past hour to talk her down. I think I better go back to the hospital and give her a familiar target to attack so those poor women can have a break. Lemme just get some coffee on the way.
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