Korsakoff's syndrome is a very rare serious illness that
someone can get several ways. My wife ended up with it as a
result of getting Wernicke's Encephalopathy. It is a sort
term memory condition and causes the patient to have chronic
amnesia. This condition is extremely dangerous because the
patient is very intellectual but simply does not remember
everything they need to remember through the course of the
day to safely care for themselves. So, you can meet and
speak to someone with Korsakoff's and not even know they
have the condition. Their long term memory is usually in
tact and they remember everything before the onset of their
illness, the problem is that they usually can not maintain
new memories thus making them accident prone and in risk of
not caring for their own basic needs.
My wife's version of Korsakoff's syndrome is often referred
to as Wernicke's - Korsakoff's syndrome or WKS. As
mentioned, there are several ways to get Korsakoff's
syndrome, the most common being head injuries from some sort
of accident. Some Korsakoff's patients can not form any new
memories while remember things from the past, long term. If
they do have some new memory retention, they often have a
hard time sorting those memories out. The patient will often
NOT know that they have a debilitating brain dysfunction and
do all they can to hide their illness and confusion from
others. It is the strangest thing, for a smart person to
totally forget what happened just 10 minutes ago, absolutely
no memory of what was said or happened. Diane does retain
some new memories, some longer than others but she does need
daily supervision. I have heard of severe cases where
patients only having a 30 second memory, then all is lost,
while others may remember things for up to 8 hours, and in
mild cases a patient may remember 1/2 of what they
experience. Most patients will have a different degree of
the illness. In most cases they will try to hide their
condition from you in an attempt to make you think they are
normal. But what you often see, after spending a few hours
or days with them is a very confused person that needs help.
Because of the patients inability to remember simple basic
things that happen throughout the day, they are a real
safety hazard to themselves. I have heard stories about them
starving to death, could not remember if they ate or not.
Heard of them developing pneumonia and dying in bed, because
they did not realize that they have been in bed for 20 or
more days and never left their room. Some have had terrible
accidents at home and work. While others have had car
accident after accident because their ability to make fast
decisions and react to things have been greatly hampered. In
most cases the patient has to be supervised and most have to
be institutionalized. I was told by our neurologist that
Diane would not live another 6 weeks. He simply had not had
any patients in her condition survive longer than that.
Needless to say, it did not take me long to stop visiting
his office.
A very common misconception way for people to relate to this
illness is an example of the movie "Ground Hog Day". Bill
Murray was reliving a day over and over again. It is really
not like that, there is a movie that is a good example and
it is called "50 First Dates", a comedy with Adam Sandler
and Drew Barrymore. She had the illness because of an
accident. Each day that she woke up she had no memory of the
day before. It was an example of her retaining all of her
previous memory from a certain day, the day before her
accident, then not remembering any days after that, thus
stuck at that specific time. A scary thing. There were
other's in the movie that had Korsakoff's but at different
degrees.
All in all this is a type of dementia and should be treated
as such. You have to show these patients a lot of love and
patients to help them feel comfortable and safe. The most
common way to check someone for a form of dementia is to ask
them what day and date it is. They usually have no sense of
time. However, if they have a two hour memory and seen the
date information within that time frame, they can pass the
test.
Here are a couple of links:
NOTICE: I am not a medical
professional, have no medical experience, and do not intend
to give you medical advise. I am simply sharing my
experience with this illness.
