Tabula_Rasa

No no, it's a fair question. I'm generally quite open to discussing what it's been like for me since I got amnesia. I do have quite a few anecdotes. I know it's not quite the same for everyone but I do have some classic symptoms that people screw up when they get "Hollywood Amnesia" - my older memories are more intact, presumably due to neuroplasticity, but without giving it much thought one may assume that the newer memories, being fresher, are the ones that are more intact.

A lot of things ended up going into more procedural memory than I was expecting. I can't actually tell you how I was able to still log into my online accounts with my password - I suspect muscle memory has a lot to do with it. I often will have a sense if I knew a person if I see a picture of them or I read their name, but sometimes linking it further than that goes nowhere. Music/language is interesting, yet mostly expected. You're probably familiar with the case of Scott Adams, who worked on overcoming Spasmodic dysphonia using a nursery rhyme. So certainly different pathways there - I will remember tunes, lyrics (even in languages that I can barely use anymore), but not the context, artist, etc. I can read all the non-latin scripts that I used to be able to read.

Thanks for the advice, and getting the mentor thing! I went to a Ruby meetup a few months ago, but I didn't have my laptop so I just ended up standing around awkwardly. I've been meaning to look for other groups though, and things that could be a bit more friendly and less opened ended such as talks, workshops, and so forth.

That is a really cool idea. Is there anything similar for submitting solutions to more general programming problems, like the kinds of things they ask you to in interviews with hashing/sorting/etc? I can't figure out how the assignments are "graded" as such without logging in, it's just looking for a correct output regardless of sloppy code, or what?

Thanks for the support :) It sounds like you were able to get back into things after the deployment then?

I have experience this and do think it will help me out. It also does put me in a weird spot starting as a complete beginner though, say in a basic class, due to this "advantage".

Thanks, thought it was appropriate :D

I was about a year ago. Acted like a teenager in the beginning! I've since developed a few scribbles here and there ;)

I found a bunch of old love-letters in my house, kind of like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I thought they were kind of funny, so I can be relaxed about it :)

That sounds like a pretty different experience though. Honestly the best way to explain it that I can think of, is imagine that you used to be some Gold Metal Olympic runner, and now you're fully paralyzed and slowly recovering. It's just humiliating and frustrating to take these baby steps when you know that you have this past standard to look up to. You want to be happy for your friends, who are running local races, even jogging, but seeing them pass you by while you're still just hobbling is so, so, painful.

The different field is a really possible idea. I guess I'm just hindered by the fact that I apparently enjoyed my job, I was good at it, and I still have a lot of technical knowledge that wormed itself into procedural memory...I could find jobs well suited for me and jobs that were flexible, and I was intellectually stimulated. I don't know if I could say that for other jobs.

I don't know if the memory will "come back" as such, but from past experience I've been a lot faster picking old things up. Just getting past this block is what's hard.

Let me get back to you about your questions. Still not sure how public I want to go with this.

I mentioned briefly in the intro about the issues with my own University. In theory I think you're correct about the difference between a university and company environment, adaptability-wise, but in my own experience, I've been really shocked by the treatment I've been given by my University. I've spoken to my old advisor and a number of departments trying to figure out what I could do to start classes again. They're even getting tripped up on things like, what does the registrar do when someone takes two classes and gets two satisfactory grades? I actually don't believe auditing is free, and they've been telling me that were I to go this route, I wouldn't be able to take exams, homework, and so forth.

Sadly the whole experience has really turned me off to the University route, well, at least in my former program, but were I to figure things out finance-wise, switching fields seems like a pretty good way for me to go right now. I haven't particularly got my eye on anything, but at least starting fresh would free me from some of the issues that are holding me back.

No, not stupid at all, actually I've thought about it. A friend suggested it to me, but I'm not sure if I'd ever be comfortable with it. Not to trash reddit or anything, but I find the posting community here really awesome, and would probably have a pretty low tolerance for any trolling that would pop up there or pretty much anywhere else. It was hard even posting this and I'm not quite ready to "go public" because things may blow up and get out of hand.

It's kind of funny though, because there's at least one case (can't find the link right now) of some guy making a totally BS claim about amnesia in order to get attention and a book deal. A lot of news places ran the story and as someone with the real deal and more than a lay person's knowledge of memory and language, it was obvious to me that he was making it up! I don't even think about it these days as so unusual and attention worthy, since people - either due to being self-involved or discomfort with the situation - often don't really even react when I tell them about it.

Thank you! Yeah, I've taken this past year for myself to figure things out and go slow.

I'm in the US and sadly things aren't that simple - memory loss in and of itself is not grounds for any kind of financial support since it doesn't qualify as disability.

I do really wish that I was in Europe since I've found the lack of proper medical care I've received shocking and I feel that perhaps the government or local programs would offer support that just isn't available here.

Doctors were initially telling me that I'd "recover" within 6 months, whatever that meant - I imagined myself suddenly just having everything come back to me like a lightning bolt 6 months out on the dot - but whatever they meant doesn't seem to quite be the case. I've pieced together some things due to a combination of experience, facts, and slight memory jogging, but after this far out it's pretty clear to me that a lot is just lost for good. The good thing is that I don't seem to have any additional memory impairments, and I didn't end up with antrograde amnesia!

Sadly the lack of informing me about LTD or any options was the "communication issue" I mentioned about my former workplace. In addition, they're no longer in business. I did have quite a bit of savings though and I'm making use of what public resources I can. Both the administration and my former advisor (only person I can think of that I knew personally) seem pretty unwilling to go out of their way for me. Not only are there technical issues with taking a class twice, but I think auditing is also pretty expensive, and I wouldn't get to take exams/do homework. Not to be overly negative on these two points, but it's what happened, and this kind of general (even basic) lack of support has been really tough for me.

The last one is a neat angle - maybe I'll expand my search to include things like that, thanks!