Question: On Skins Tony lost his memory from being hit by a car. Does the memory come back ? And why did he lose it?!

Sarah Thomas answered on 19 Jun 2011:

I can tell you a little bit about this because it happened to me!

In 2007 I was involved in a serious car accident. A van drove up the wrong side of the road and hit my car head on. Not only was he driving on the wrong side of the road, but he was speeding. All i remember is seeing him pull out into my path – I braked HARD and then braced myself against the steering wheel for impact. Then blackness.

The next thing I know I am in a hospital bed with a needle in my arm and wires attached to my chest and ankle, and a note placed on my chest from the nurses that said I had been in a car accident and I was having problems with my memory.

I was sent for a cat scan and it showed that I had an odema in the cerebral cortex of my brain (left hand side of my forehead). I also had swelling of my brain which means it was pushing against my skull. I had my scalp stapled back together and the doctors waited for the swelling to go down to see what the damage was…

Luckily I don’t remember any of this! The bit of my brain that was damaged is where your short term memories are stored. This meant I was unable to make new memories. This is called retrograde amnesia. At the time I could remember facts like what year it was and who was prime minister but I struggled to recall things about myself.

As the swelling went down a lot of things came back, like where I lived and what I did as a job. But large chunks of memory from my past was gone. I was soon discharged from hospital and back to work just one week later!

The brain damage I sustained is permanent so I have a permanent problem relating to my short term memory, but I don’t think it’s noticable in my day-to-day life. I just write myself notes and lists of what I’m supposed to be doing and live out of a diary I carry EVERYWHERE!

A lot of memories came back, but I will never remember the moments after the crash or much of my time in hospital.

The thing with memory loss is it’s all to do with what part of your brain you damaged because different parts of your brain are responsabile for different things. Sometimes the event that causes it is so traumatic that your brain just blocks it out for you, like a self preservation thing.

I hope this answers your question! I don’t watch skins so I don’t know if this is similar or not! I think in most cases of amnesia, the memory does come back.