Torsten Schmidt is 46 years of age, when he collapses at a football game. Cardiac arrest. Thanks to the immediate resuscitation he survives. But after waking from an artificial coma, he can remember nothing. We have talked with Torsten and his doctor.
Actually, Torsten Schmidt (Name was changed) there is no active football player. But in 2016, the then 46 half-Year-old in his team. During the game, he suddenly fell, suffered a heart attack. For several minutes he was clinically dead, but the rescuers were able to revive him.
In the hospital, Doctors put him in an artificial coma. For Schmidt’s family weeks of uncertainty followed: “no one knew, whether I Wake up ever again,” he says in an interview with FOCUS Online. But the miracle happened: After a few weeks, Torsten Schmidt opened his eyes.
The joy received a sudden shock: Todd’s memory was erased
The initial joy received a sudden shock: As Thorsten could remember nothing more. Not only the day of the accident was not disappeared from his memory, any memory of his life: “I knew what a chair or a table had been wiped out 46 years of her life completely. All have just said ‘Cool!’ – whatever that means…,“ says Torsten Schmidt. New stores memories in its brain since Waking up from the coma reliable.
During the Cardiac arrest there was in his brain to a lack of oxygen. Even as he lay in an artificial coma, prepared for the Doctors Schmidt’s family on possible consequential damage. Which degree would you accept, they could not estimate at this time.
Today, you know: The lack of oxygen has caused in his brain, a so-called agnosia. This means: Torsten Schmidts Person with all your memories and your Knowledge has been wiped out. “In people with acquired brain damage we are experiencing, it is more likely that parts of the Altgedächtnisses will remain the same and the storing of new information is impaired. In the case of Mr. Schmidt, this is not so,“ says Stephan Bamborschke, Chief physician of the center for Post-Acute Neurorehabilitation (PAN) in Berlin. There, Schmidt was held for 18 months in his fight back to life support. For the interview with FOCUS Online, he has freed Stephan Bamborschke of his duty of confidentiality.
To the knowledge of a hole – and then the fight ensued
As Schmidt a few weeks after awakening from the coma gradually realized, what happened to him and what impact this will have on his life, he fell into a hole. “Everything was so exhausting. I didn’t want to“. A week he spent, because of the strong depression in psychiatry, “but then I begged my sister to let me out”. Because the people there had different problems than he himself.
Here is the Newsletter of ‘health’ subscribe
Reports, Videos, backgrounds: From Monday to Friday, provided you FOCUS Online with the most important messages from the health Department. Here you can subscribe to the Newsletter easily and free of charge.
On the psychiatry of stay in the PAN the center. There, the Doctors and psychologists, together provided him with an individual program. A total of 18 months of Doctors, Neuro-psychologists, speech therapists, cared for, Ergo – and physiotherapists to his Rehabilitation. “I have seen such a case before,” explains Stephan Bamborschke, for over 20 years in neurology. Schmidt recalls: “The staff at the facility did not know the self, what comes to you.” Although the center specializes in neurologic diseases, there was never such a pronounced case of agnosia.
“Throwing money in the trash”: Todd’s complete world wiped out was know
“In the beginning, I tried to eat my jacket and threw money in the trash, because I knew what to do with that,” says Schmidt. Chief physician Bamborschke explains that, in the case of a so-called “apperzeptiven agnosia,” so be that Concerned with your eyes, perceive everything, but no connection can bring. In the case of a semantic agnosia that part of memory is not available in the people your so-called world store know. Mr Schmidt both before and he had to train himself for this in his two-year Rehabilitation laboriously.
The Professor of neurology, explains that it Concerned mostly very difficult for new information in the brain to store. But Torsten Schmidt is in it amazingly well. In addition, he had developed an awareness of his illness. This is an important prerequisite for its learning ability.
“Torsten Schmidt has imprinted what looks like and where he can find”. And to read all of this, although with his memory, his ability, and went to write is lost. “I don’t recognize the letters. It took weeks until I could write my name,“ says Schmidt. He keeps his memories and his Knowledge, use the memo voice function of a tablet. “No one would have ever thought that I would see again someday in a home of their own or work”. But Torsten Schmidt has shown it all.
“One of my biggest successes is the Learning of the time”
In September, he has for the first Time since his cardiac arrest, the PAN was left-center, without having to return. He moved to a supervised apartment. However, in order to facilitate this, he has a long struggle behind. Many of the routines he had to learn, including how it is oriented in its environment. “In everyday life, it is important that Mr Schmidt is the habit of some routines. And that is only by the things repeated over and over again. Then be switched on in the brain, new synapses,“ explains chief physician Bamborschke.
“Without my family I would not have survived the”
And that is tedious. “One of my biggest successes is the Learning of the time,” says Schmidt. He also knows: “Without my family I would not have survived all of this”. Because you don’t be to him, has given way to since the first day of the page. Father, brother-in-law, sisters, brother, mother – all of them have taken care of the last two years to “her Charlie”. A son he has not, he is married, however.
In the PAN-the centre of the industrial masters, the later to the gardener, and then in addition to the social workers retrained learned a new activity: the processing of wood. Because even the memory of his occupations disappeared with the Rest of the memory in the black cloud of the past. But his new job is pleasing to him: “You have a reason to get up in the morning,” explains Schmidt. Some self-manufactured pieces are even with him in the new apartment.
Old flames to blaze new: Between Torsten and his Ex-girlfriend, it has re-sparked
In his new life, which began in September, he has a Job in a workshop for disabled people and lives in her own apartment. The same to his new old flame: Claudia (the Name lives changed). “We used to be quite a Few, at the time of cardiac arrest,” explains Schmidt, who can give his memories of the past. “When I left on Pentecost, the rehab and my family drove, we met. And it has re-sparked,“ he says with a noticeable Smirk on his face. “Recognized” have it your voice, your face struck him as somehow familiar. But he couldn’t place it.
Voices and music are generally the only thing Schmidt can remember, in fact, somehow””: “I know all the lyrics by heart – whether English or German,” he laughs. And have helped him much: “music is the best therapy”.
Unclear if his memories ever come back
Whether his memory will ever return? The chief physician of the PAN-centre Stephan Bamborschke has no response to this: “The Problem with brain damage due to lack of oxygen is that the changes in the cortex more diffusely over the individual layers of the brain and the neural network are distributed. In CT you can see there’s mostly no circumscribed lesions at the most minimal changes. We don’t know why his Altgedächtnis is deleted. Maybe just a access is blocked“.
Thanks to Schmidt’s, good learning skills and with the help of the vocational workshop in which he works after the hospital stay, are his chances good, however, to fight back in a controlled everyday life: “Perhaps he will, one day, even get a job on the first labour market”.
“I saw for the first Time in my life the rain”
Shortly before he was allowed to leave the rehab clinic in September, he told FOCUS Online: “Again, starting from scratch, is somehow also beautiful.” He compares himself with his few-month-old nephew. He could now learn everything new, to know – to be impartial like a little child: “I saw for the first Time in my life, snow. And Rain!“, he will be happy. Outside the clinic, he wants to discover “the world anew”.
His passion for football is not lost: “first of all, I’m going to secure the access to all of the football games for my TV,” explains Torsten Schmidt, laughing. Most of all, he was glad, however, to his 15-year-old son: “The needs of his father. And I need him“.