Real Life "Groundhog Day"
While watching the Today Show a couple of weeks ago, I was fascinated by one of the guests, Michelle Philpots. This young woman lost her short term memory due to a couple of head injuries that she suffered from vehicular accidents and since 1994 has not been able to remember the events of the previous day. She is living in a real life “Groundhog Day” situation with no chance of waking up from it. She can participate in everyday activities, such as driving a car and carrying on a conversation, but she does not recall the social memories--the interactions that she has with other people. This situation must be terribly frustrating for her and her husband, who knew Michelle before the accidents and memory loss, but married her even when he knew she would not be able to remember their life together. Now I would never wish to lose my memory or want it to happen to anyone else, but I do think that there are things we can learn from Michelle’s experience. If we could train ourselves to erase t...