Jeffrey,

It sounds like some of your long term memory has been lost due to damage. This is called retrograde amnesia. It can be hit and miss, only effecting some long term memories. These lost memories may just pop-up at the oddest times. The ability to index and recall is lost but not always the actual memory.

There is a special part of the brain that connects visual images with names. This is likely damaged. I can recognize a person as familiar but struggle with the person's name.

Although I do not spend a lot of time in public where I see these forgotten persons, I still do exercise this skill. I watch TV and try to put a name to faces. Sometimes, it may be an actor in a commercial or seeing an actor guest star that is familiar from a previous show or movie.

I use the internet to identify the person then try to recall the name when I see the person again. Between wiki and imdb.com, I can usually find anybody who has very appeared on screen. This has been a useful exercise for my face recall. I still may pause when I see the person but I can sort through my memory more successfully.

Memory is like a muscle. It needs to be exercised. You may not be able to fix the damage but you will be able to learn other ways to remember things.

You would benefit from some memory status tests to track whether your memory is getting worse. Have you had a neuro-psychological assessment? It is the most thorough way of diagnosing memory problems.

Are your ten medications being prescribed by the same doctor? They may be negatively effecting your memory. You will benefit from a sit down with a good pharmacist to review your medications. The pharmacist knows more about drug interactions and side effects that the doctors in most cases.

The hardest part of brain injury is when a person with high intelligence suffers cognitive and memory dysfunctions. We are so dependent on our memory for our personal identity as an intelligent person that when we lose memory functions, we start to think we have become raving idiots. That is definitely not the cane. There are still plenty of ways to express ourselves.

So, please lighten up on yourself. You still have a lot going for you. You just need to relax and start finding ways to work-around and accommodate your dysfunctions better. There is still plenty of life ahead for you. You just need to look for it in different places.

My best to you.