article_snippet: The confused driver, a salesman, was taken to hospital, where a junior doctor found nothing wrong with a junior doctor, apart from memory loss.
article_snippet: a junior doctor concluded that it was an episode of transient global amnesia (TGA), a dramatic, but harmless condition.
article_snippet: a junior doctor asked Dr Allan Ropper, then the hospital’s senior resident in neurology, to authorise the patient’s discharge, expecting that a junior doctor memory loss would, as usual in incidents of TGA, return within hours.
article_snippet: The patient recalled only getting in The patient car that morning and heading for somewhere completely different.
article_snippet: The patient couldn’t retain the names of the doctors examining The patient or what The patient’d just eaten.
article_snippet: The following morning, the salesman’s memory had returned, but with huge gaps: had the salesman
article_snippet: ’s memory been suffering only an episode of temporary amnesia, the salesman’s memory would have returned completely.
article_snippet: After 23 hours, the patient’s speech became slurred and Ropper knew instantly the salesman
article_snippet: ’s memory was suffering a stroke.
article_snippet: An arterial blockage was restricting blood flow to part of the salesman’s memory brain.
article_snippet: Treated with anticoagulants and other drugs, the salesman