AmyMarie,

Welcome to NeuroTalk. I am glad to hear your DH is doing so well.

His memory symptoms are totally normal. For the short term, he just needs to change how he depends on his memory. In my house, either my wife would have written a note on my white board on the refrigerator or I would have given her the debit card right then.

Delaying action to rely on short term memory is problematic. Also, it is not uncommon to have difficulties transferring memories from short term to long term. Much of this happens during sleep as the brain sorts and reorganized and indexes the previous day's events.

I bet he is still not back to his normal sleep habits completely. This would account for the memory issues.

Getting concerned about a little issue like this is counter-productive. Give him some grace to forget. If you want a higher level of memory accountability, try to share the memory load with him. Let him know you are not being critical or nagging when you remind him of things.

You also need to keep in mind that he could have forgotten this same issue without his concussion history. If he had other things on his mind when you made the request, a normal brain would tend to forget over-night.

If this becomes a frequent event, another system that helps is to ask for the request to be repeated by the person receiving the request. This needs to be agreed to by both persons as a communication aid and not a critical comment. It can be a great help to a marriage regardless of concussion history.

My best to you both.