It is a poignant testimony that of Jaël, in “Special Envoy” of April 20, 2023. After surgery last fall, she woke up … having forgotten everything. She, who no longer recognized her loved ones, begins today, with their help and a lot of willpower, “to move forward”, she confides in this extract.
“My name is Jaël, I am 43 years old, but I was born on October 7, 2021. I have amnesia, I lost my memory fourteen months ago now. I lost the first 42 years of my life .” A little over a year ago, the young woman underwent neurosurgery to prevent a ruptured aneurysm. When she woke up, she had no memory. The memory loss was evaluated between 90% and 95%. Only his so-called “procedural” memory, that of motor automatisms such as walking, or cognitive ones such as reading and writing, has been preserved.
In front of the mirror, his own face does not “evokes nothing”. “It’s really like waking up one morning with a face other than your own,” describes Jael. With the loss of this perceptual memory, the faces of his loved ones, too, faded from his memories. In front of the photos of her childhood, her mother, on the verge of tears, looks back on a very difficult moment: “I left, she went to have surgery. I’m coming back, she doesn’t recognize me.” To hold on, she tells herself that her daughter “was just born” and that she must “teach him everything”, she confides.
“You see yourself dying with the people who were supposedly dear to you”
In addition to the unconditional support of his mother, Jaël can also count on that of his companion. In this excerpt from “Special Envoy”, Julien recounts his fright on arriving at the hospital, when he discovers “a person prostrate on a bed, lost, like a small animal in a cage”. When they had been in a relationship for two years, Jaël wonders who this stranger is…
“You have the person you love in front of you, and you see that it does not reflect… not anything, but just anguish. Me, I was terrified of what was happening to him.”
Jaël’s companion, who became amnesic following surgeryin “Special Envoy”
The one she was at the end of the operation, Jaël describes her as “a living-dead”. “A human being, what makes his wealth is what he has lived, this is what he loves, this is what makes up what he has been since he is born, she said with emotion, and when we no longer have that, we live upright, but we live dead.” So, armed with all her will, she decides “to no longer be a living dead, but to be a survivor”. That’s when, she says, she starts, not “to get better”, but “to advance”.
Today, Jaël still has a lot to relearn, like certain words or expressions that she no longer knows how to use. She left Paris for an apartment in Marseille, where the view of the city and its hills gives her a form of peace.
Excerpt from “Memories flown away”, a report to see in “Special Envoy” on April 20, 2023.
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