A traumatic brain injury can affect your memory on many levels. It’s very common to experience memory issues immediately after the incident, and they can continue for a significant amount of time.
Often, the issue is that people won’t remember the traumatic event at all. Say that you’re in a car accident, you hit your head on the dashboard, and you wake up in the hospital. If you had a serious TBI, the last thing you may remember is getting in the car. You have no recollection of the accident, and those memories may never return. This can be very jarring.
Long-term issues
In some cases, there are extended memory issues that injury victims have to deal with for a long time, or perhaps for the rest of their lives. These can include:
- Having a conversation and then forgetting all of the important details
- Not being able to remember certain words while speaking
- Misplacing items, like your car keys or cellphone, and not being able to remember where they are
- Difficulty forming new memories, leading to short-term memory problems even if long-term memories remain intact
- Consistently losing track of time, which can seriously impact your career and relationships
- Forgetting things you directly engaged with, such as a movie you watched or a book you read
In some cases, these memory issues can be so severe that they change the course of your life. For example, you may have been working as a college professor when you suffered a TBI, and now you can’t remember your subject well enough to continue teaching. This injury could derail your entire career, even if you physically recover after the crash.
If you find yourself facing extensive financial challenges due to these injuries, be sure you know how to seek compensation from the party who caused the accident.