Intermittant Short Term Memory Loss

[Estelle Gregory]

Has the neurologist discussed transient ischemic attacks (this is not a 
typical presentation but worth asking about).  Is your wife takilng any 
medications (eg a tranquilizer once in  while, etc), does she drink 
alcohol, use any "recreational drugs"? Anyone else who is biologically 
related to her with same symptoms?

  Bill Meade (sbmeade at umslvma.umsl.edu) 
wrote:
: My wife (age 34) has had intermittant loss of short term (i.e., the last 
: two weeks of events when it happens) memory for the past 12 years. 
: Frequency is about once every 8 months (sometimes once a year others 
: once a month).  In the past 5 years she's had a CatScan, EEG (had the 
: memory loss while on the EEG machine the first time but no symptoms were 
: picked up) twice, and one year ago she had an MRI.  MRI showed some 
: shrinkage around the  brain stem (in the neurologist's words) but nothing 
: else major. 
:   
: She had another episode 3 weekends ago.  It happend (as is often the 
: case) while she was taking a short nap.  She wakes up not knowing what is 
: going on (not disoriented just no memeories).  It looks for all the world 
: like a hard disk is being decheckerboarded and is interrupted in the 
: middle.  All the pointers are gone and have to be rebuilt.  In about 24 
: hours she is back to normal and the memories are back except for a few 
: fuzzy facts (she reviews shopping lists etc. to nail down as many details 
: as possible).  Only drug she is on is birth control pills.  We have 3 
: kids under 10 and are under no huge stresses.  Yes, we called the   
: neurologist about this but he had no new ideas.   
:   
: If anyone has any ideas I would appreciate it if you would contact me and   
: let me know.  We're at a loss about where to go next and have gone into   
: "broacast mode" to avoid overlooking any simple cures that might exist.   
:  
: Bill Meade sbmeade at umslvma.umsl.edu