If you saw the early 2000s flick 50 First Dates and thought it was bad enough that Drew Barrymore lost her memory every night when she went to sleep, well, Clive Wearing’s story of amnesia is likely to completely shock you.
Real Stories takes us through Clive’s extraordinary battle with one of the worst cases of amnesia this world has seen, as his memory span lasts a mere seven seconds.
A talented musician, Clive was a renowned conductor living in London, England, when he fell ill with a virus in 1985. Due to his illness, parts of his brain came out of the virus completely destroyed, including much of his memory.
Miraculously, his ability to play music stayed intact, with one huge caveat — he doesn’t know what it’s like to play music now because he can’t hear the notes. Clive describes his music-playing abilities as a kind of unconscious playing that he can’t hear or doesn’t even remember when he’s finished.
During Clive’s battle with a virus that had been making its rounds through London, Clive’s wife, Deborah, noticed some odd behavior that led her to call their doctor and eventually to a stay in the hospital for Clive.
Due to an extremely high fever and the discovery that herpes simplex encephalitis had caused major inflammation in Clive’s brain, close family and friends were convinced that they might not even see Clive make it through this illness.
Clive eventually won his battle against the virus due to lifesaving medicine, but unfortunately it did not prevent major irreversible damage to his hippocampus, a part of the brain that’s crucial to memory and learning. He was left diagnosed with dense amnesia.
To learn more about Clive’s story and why he describes his life to be “like death,” watch the video.
