For over seven weeks, Ken Howell lay in a coma. On regaining consciousness, thirty years of memories had been wiped out; he was back in the late 1950s. He didn't recognise his wife or children. Ken and Christine, his wife, talk about how they coped with the traumatic months that followed... Ken begins, "For the first six months of coming out of the coma, I was seriously ill. When I looked in the mirror, it wasn't me - it was a young person looking into it and all I could see was an old man." Seeing his wife Christine for the first time was another baffling experience for Ken, "I just thought she was a complete stranger. I'd never met her before. Eventually I got used to her because she kept getting me meals and putting me to bed..." Christine had been told that Ken was unlikely to live more than three months, but was unprepared for her husband's memory loss, "I just thought it was the medication - and thought he get used to us again. He wouldn't let our grown up children in the house - they were strangers." Eighteen months later, Christine was told that Ken's memory would never return. "I decided then," says Christine, "that we were going to live for the future, day on day, and not look back."
Ken describes how he coped with the news that his memory loss was permanent, "I had to be totally reliant on Christine, so everything she said to me, as far as I was concerned, was the absolute truth - the fact that we'd got grown up children and had been married for so long. What really helped me was last Saturday, when we re-took our marriage vows. For me, I was getting married for the first time - and now I know she must be my wife!"
Ken and Christine's eldest son, a nurse, coped quite well with his father's memory loss, as did their youngest son, who is quite a realist. Their daughter, close to her father, found it very hard to accept. Christine herself, dealt positively with her husband's denial that she was his wife, "Why throw thirty-two years of marriage away just because you're going through a sticky patch - it was pretty horrendous. The medication made him aggressive, I knew it wasn't Ken talking."
Unsurprisingly, Ken can't recall anything about those first few months. On leaving the hospital, Ken thought Christine was a nurse. And far from going back to a familiar home, Ken felt he was returning to a strange house full of strange objects. Christine describes how his personality changed, "He used to be very laid back, but now little things play on his mind. For instance, he'd panic about the amount of a bill, because his monetary perception goes back to what he was earning when he left school which was about £3.15s.6d.!" Strangers were easier for Ken to deal with than those close to him. Christine explains, "The kids would come in and say "Hi Dad. How are you? And he'd say, "I'm not your dad!"
It has been far from easy time for the family, but Christine says now, "It was worth it! On the day we re-took our vows, Ken couldn't stop smiling. He wanted so much to thank people for persevering with us." Ken is too, is happy, "I'm far more positive about life. I'm very lucky to be alive."
