(ORDO NEWS) — Daniel Schmidt survived an accident that, according to experts, could easily have been fatal for him, but on that day he lost what many of us take for granted – his memories.
Dory the fish from Disney’s Finding Nemo suffered from short-term memory problems, forgetting everything that happened to her a few hours ago.
The same thing happened in 2015 to a German man named Daniel Schmidt after he was in a car accident and suffered many injuries, including a head injury.
He went through intensive physical therapy and speech therapy sessions to regain his ability to speak, but the only thing he couldn’t get back was his memory.
With a Level 3 head injury, Schmidt was unable to transfer short-term memories to long-term ones, which means that whenever he goes to bed at night, he forgets everything that happened to him that day. He forgot the people he met, the places he visited, everything he did.
“I was going to visit my sister the day I ended up in a car on the freeway. There was a traffic jam and I was the last one to join it. I was sitting there, and then a car pulled up behind me – it was a big seven-seater car with a young family inside and her driver didn’t notice the traffic jam at all.
He crashed into me at over 80 mph. The entire highway was shut down after that. I had a lot of injuries, but they weren’t too serious. I was airlifted to the hospital. I received a severe head injury – they call it a third-degree TBI,” says Schmidt.
Daniel Schmidt survived an accident that, according to experts, could easily have been fatal for him, but on that day he lost what many of us take for granted – his memories.
Even after Daniel regained control of his body and learned to speak again, he was unable to return to his former life. He couldn’t even remember his old friends and didn’t feel connected to them, and even his relationship with his then-girlfriend became very difficult.
“I had to communicate with her no later than three days later. I needed to hear her voice and we needed to talk and see each other, otherwise I would have forgotten her and when I saw her again, it would be like the first time for me”.
Daniel now keeps lists of the important things he does every day to make sure he remembers them the next day, but in order to form any long-term memories of them, he needs to repeat them daily for a longer period of time.
“If we met two days in a row, Daniel might remember us. But if we came two weeks later, he would never recognize us,” says Nadine Nieman, a filmmaker who made a documentary about Daniel Schmidt and his unusual problem with memory.
“But we took precautions. I always talked to him the day before filming. He could remember voices and he had a picture of us hanging in his kitchen.”
Daniel and his girlfriend now have a child together – a boy and one of the things he regrets the most is that he completely forgot when his birthday was. It’s one of the things he’s learned to live with, but he admits that some days are harder than others and that he struggles with depression from time to time.
Daniel Schmidt’s case is similar to the script for the classic romantic comedy 50 First Dates starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, only his story is nowhere near as romantic. In the end, he and his girlfriend Katerina broke up, but still see each other quite often, as Daniel is still involved in his son’s life.
While Daniel hopes one day to regain his ability to process short-term memories into long-term ones, the prognosis is not very encouraging. Now he is committed to helping others with similar illnesses overcome their disability.
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