Memory, speech and balance

On September 2 2005, Wendy and I had a tasty meal and a bottle of Chianti with my second cousin Nick Potter and his wife Toni, at an Italian restaurant in Canberra. It was a special occasion, because I brought Nick into the world in 1959 and hadn't seen him since he was a baby. As we stood to leave at the end of the evening, I felt a sudden peculiar sensation inside my head and knew instantly that I had experienced a small bleed into my brain. I had difficulty forming words, and my balance was unsteady. These symptoms persisted, and to some extent, still persist more than 6 years later. Magnetic resonance imaging when we returned to Ottawa confirmed that I had multiple small infarcts in my basal ganglia. What slowly became apparent was that the small brain-bleed had impaired my short-term memory and wiped out some of my long term memories, including ability to understand and speak German, Italian and French. The memory loss is quite extensive, as I realize when I read Wendy's diaries: she often describes events and people of whom I have no memory whatsoever. I am thankful that the bleed was not more extensive. At least it didn't cause partial paralysis or more serious speech disorder than slight hesitancy and a frequent, not always successful, search for the right word when I'm speaking. As for balance, I don't try even to balance on the bottom step of my little ladder, I leave to my kids any tasks that require use of the ladder.