My TGA came out of the blue. I was fit, fairly slim, aged 62, about six months into an open-ended solo wander through Argentina. I'd paused a while in the Autumn (February 2013), to rent a cabin in the garden of an AirBnB house, with access to Nahuel Huapi Lake. From this base, I was doing day-long horseback rides into the hills, hiking up mountains, and loving the freedom of my retirement. It was my home.

 

Be clear: I have no recollection of what happened just before and during my TGA episode. I had to piece together from the accounts of relative strangers all that transpired, then translate my report into Spanish via my computer so that I could adequately communicate with medical consultants in the days that followed. It's hard to have a TGA in a foreign land, but I am fascinated that, according to all witnesses, even in the throes of the episode, I was speaking as much Spanish as I can, switching to English whenever I could, returning to Spanish (they call it Castellano) when I saw anyone wasn’t understanding me.

 

Shopping in Bariloche one afternoon, I bought hiking sandals. I clearly remember giving my broken ones to be thrown away and putting on the new ones, which were a compromise, not what I’d had for the previous couple of pairs.  Then I remember nothing until I woke up at 4 am. A young woman staying at the house swore at me for putting on my light and stumbling over sandals I couldn’t place, - didn’t know whose they were nor why they were in my way. I don’t leave things to be tripped over! Whatever was she doing in my spare bed in my cabin???? Her reaction traumatized me; it is the only thing that has and drove the swirling mists of a dream into shattered oblivion. What a pity! I think ‘the dream’ may have been ‘memories’ of the incident, but I’ll never know.

 

Apparently, I caught the bus home from Bariloche, a journey of about 14km. There a fellow guest I knew a bit was just leaving with her new host to go to a house on Peninsula San Pedro, opposite our house. Her host invited me to go with them and kayak back, across Lake Nahuel Huapi, something I’d said I was keen to do. I got my jacket from my cabin and went with them. We looked over Walter’s home, a fabulous log-built 'mansion' of a house and then I paddled off into the sunset. I took five photos from the kayak around 8.15 pm. I am assuming that, until then, I was ok. No more photos, whereas I would normally have charted my arrival to the destination. I arrived at about 9 pm to a jetty near home and called out in Spanish for help. I said I didn’t know where I was going, where I came from, whose kayak I was in, or whose shoes I was wearing (they were my new sandals). I kept saying that I was worried I’d stolen the kayak. My repetitions were focused on not knowing whose shoes I was wearing. I was in a two-person craft, and couldn’t tell whether there’d been a second person with me, so the Naval Police were called. They used my Last Number dialed from the iPhone in my pocket to connect from the phone. Presumably, I helped with my access code. It was my host and he told them I lived in the property adjacent. We walked over there.  I didn’t recognize a man whom I’d met earlier that morning, though he says I was lovely, ‘away with the fairies’, very sweet.  I did not recognize my cabin. But, when asked, I produced my key to unlock it and they say I knew my sons in a photo. My eyes were staring wide and glassy; I’m told my body was held strongly but my steps were slow and I was smiling vaguely and clearly did not know what was happening, was confused, and bemused. The Naval Police took me to the clinic to meet my host, who was already in town. They handed me over, understanding I’d be admitted, but my landlord didn’t have any money and I wasn’t clear enough to give Insurance details, so he took me to the hospital but the queues were long and so he and the woman he was with, who was also a guest in his house, took me back to my cabin. It was decided that the woman should stay in the bed next to mine after putting me to bed. When I woke up to go to the loo and switched on the light, she was angry and impatient with me but gave me to understand that I’d been out in a kayak and gone to the hospital and all. Distressing…..I made her leave so that I could try to figure it all out but I could remember nothing after buying the sandals, eleven hours or more earlier. Except, when my host visited me that morning and said the name of the kayak owner, I remembered a man with a big beard; Walter has a very big beard. I have a vague, distant memory/far distant dream swirl of the car journey and of a bit of Walter’s house but only after my host told me where I’d gone, and NONE of the shore or kayak or paddling or the rest. I can’t get any of it to come back, though I later saw the kayak, went to the house, saw photos taken from the shore, and of course returned to the clinic. I woke up clear as a bell and remember from that minute, in detail. I had no headache when I woke up and couldn’t feel any bruises. None of my clothes were wet. I was intrigued by the sandals, asked whose they were but was told I’d asked that over and again all evening and that they were mine and I’d bought them earlier in the day; I then remembered buying them fairly clearly, and all that led up to that moment.

 

All subsequent tests were clear and the neurologist diagnosed TGA.