\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSupplied photo<\/p>\n
Community correspondent Adriano Magnifico leaning on the tree that triggered his TGA episode.<\/p><\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n
After that thud, I can only share what family members later described to me.<\/p>\n
I turned to my wife and asked at least a dozen times, “Who cut this branch?”<\/p>\n
She thought I was being melodramatic, no idea that my short-term memory was deserting me, each happening evaporating from my memory as quickly as it was being forged.<\/p>\n
She directed me to the back yard to get some rakes and leaf bags for raking work I planned to do. When I didn’t return, she walked to the back yard and found me staring straight ahead in the middle of the yard.<\/p>\n
“What are you doing?” she asked.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know.”<\/p>\n
“The rakes?”<\/p>\n
I pulled two rakes from a bin and slowly followed her to the front yard.<\/p>\n
There, I dragged the rake across the grass once, stopped, and dropped it.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”<\/p>\n
I have zero memory of any of this.<\/p>\n
My wife brought me inside the house and implemented a FAST-stroke test. Pass. Heat exhaustion perhaps? She handed me a cold glass of water and applied a cold compress to my head.<\/p>\n
Worst case scenarios — stroke, brain bleed, aneurysm, seizure — filled her head. Family members began appearing at the house after she sent a concerned text.<\/p>\n
Every immediate moment seemed to vanish — if I was drinking coffee, which room I just left, a conversation with a family member, recent news items, even why ten leftover chip bags from my son’s wedding social the night before were piled on the dining room table.<\/p>\n
I found myself in an ambulance driving to the Health Sciences Centre when I inexplicably snapped out of my daze.<\/p>\n
“What am doing here?” I said, staring at two paramedics.<\/p>\n
After a long day in the HSC and a busy follow-up week completing a CT scan, extensive blood work, and an MRI, results were “unremarkable,” according to a neurologist, who said he “gets one or two patients a month, usually in their 60s, with classic TGA.”<\/p>\n
Was this a sign of dementia? A stroke? A heart attack? An epileptic seizure?<\/p>\n
No. No. No. No.<\/p>\n
Little is known about TGA. Why did my short-term memory vanish while long-term family names continued intact? Why is physical exertion a frequent trigger (like tree-cutting)? Could it happen again?<\/p>\n
Thankfully, most TGA episodes are one-offs and short-lived, but for about 60 minutes, I literally lost an hour that I would never get back.<\/p>\n