The Day I Can’t Remember: Understanding SCI and Memory
As if it were yesterday, I remember waking up on the morning of May 21, 1991. I was anticipating just another day at work, but that wouldn’t be the case.
What made this day different wasn’t the fact that we’d be jumping out the back of a C-130 a few times, but that any recollection of the incidents that immediately followed would be suppressed for years.
It took about a year after my spinal cord injury (SCI) before my body stabilized and I became comfortable managing this new sack of guts, but there were issues lingering in regard to my cognition. Sure, I could remember significant events from my childhood, but the details of my accident were nonexistent and my short-term memory had become unreliable.
Remembering to take my medications, return calls and put gas in my car had become a real burden. I felt stupid and worried others would agree. Did it have anything to do with my SCI? Could this be a side effect resulting from that cereal bowl of pills I ate every morning? Did I have a brain injury? Was there a self-help book that could fix me?
Living alone while being forgetful had its consequences, but marriage and kids raised the bar for accountability; now my forgetfulness impacted someone else.
Often, my wife accuses me of having a selective memory. I cannot confirm or deny that assertion, but there’s such a thing as intentionally forgetting something.
In 1901, founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud came up with his theory of “motivated forgetting.” It’s a psychological behavior in which we consciously forget those unwanted memories. It’s a way we sometimes cope with trauma and protect our emotional state.
Maybe this is why the details of the traumatic events that occurred May 21, 1991, were stored in my subconscious for many years before I was ready to remember them?
Aside from forgetting traumatic events from my past, there’s also the ongoing day-to-day memory loss that I continue to find most inconvenient. Remembering what happened in last week’s episode of American Idol is no big deal, but forgetting to take my medications can have serious consequences.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) maintains the National Library of Medicine (NLM), which anyone can access online at nlm.nih.gov. While on their website, I searched for documents that indicated some kind of correlation between having an SCI and cognitive impairments. As would be expected, the material I found proved to be quite dry, but also informative. It turns out an SCI can be the genesis of significant neurological changes beyond those relating to our memory, including problem-solving, attention span, ability to focus, communication skills, mood and behavior.
There’s no research that shows an SCI, in and of itself, is the direct cause of forgetting a password or wedding anniversary. However, there’s evidence that SCI patients are more likely to experience some lingering issues, including memory loss.
Obviously, if your SCI was caused by trauma, there’s a chance you also have a brain injury. An October 2023 Korean study published online in the Annals of Rehabilitation Medicine found the incidence of SCI and traumatic brain injury can be more than 60%.
Medications that we take for our muscle spasms or chronic pain can have cognitive side effects, and if not managed properly, the results can be ugly. Remember singer Ozzy Osbourne circa 1979? That was me after my daily dose of baclofen and hydrocodone, but thankfully, the Prince of Darkness and I moved on to better days.
If the pain medications aren’t enough and you choose to self-medicate with copious amounts of alcohol, more likely than not, the cognitive impairments will outlast the hangovers.
Sleep apnea, a sleep disorder that restricts oxygen to the brain, is another contributing condition that’s significantly higher for those of us with an SCI. Matter of fact, one report I found on NLM states that 60% of patients with tetraplegia are diagnosed with sleep-disordered breathing.
Lastly, all of us with an SCI know that just trying to cope with the onset of paraplegia can trigger mental health issues such as depression and anxiety, both of which are known to cause memory loss.
There are no guarantees in preventing memory loss and there’s no magic pill, but in the more than 30 years since my life took a turn, I’ve learned a few things about preserving my memory.
I have two children at home, so eating healthy and getting good sleep have eluded me. I’ve survived just fine without buying vitamin supplements and self-help books peddled incessantly on late-night television. I avoid snake oil, and eating dehydrated jellyfish is out of the question. But I’ve found that being physically, mentally and socially active certainly helps. Perhaps one of the most effective methods for not forgetting stuff is right in front of me. If I’m not consistent in properly managing the mess atop my desk, the rest of my life spirals.
Organization is paramount, and for that reason, an oversized calendar packed with appointments and reminders is front and center with the ubiquitous Post-it notes.
However, my most reliable scheme for remembering something is simply telling my wife. With a memory like a steel trap, she remembers absolutely everything — lucky me.
As always, please let me know your thoughts at al@pvamag.com.
