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A WOMAN hit by devastating amnesia told yesterday how she went to bed as a mum aged 32 and woke thinking she was still 15.
Naomi Jacobs, of Manchester, recalled nothing after 1992, did not know she had a son and thought she was sitting her GCSEs.
She told yesterday how she SCREAMED when an unknown little boy appeared - and called her "Mum".
And stunned Naomi, who thought she was still at school, revealed she had the fright of her life when she looked in the mirror and saw a mature woman with wrinkles staring back.
Naomi thought she was about to sit her GCSE exams in 1992. In fact, she was living in 2008 - with NO recall of the intervening years. She said:
"I fell asleep as a bold, brassy, know-it-all 15-year-old - and woke up a 32-year-old single mum living in a council house.
The last thing I remember was falling asleep in my lower bunk bed, dreaming about a boy in my class.
When I woke up, this little boy appeared and started calling me 'Mum'. That's when I started to scream. I didn't know who he was. I didn't think he was much younger than me. And I certainly didn't remember giving birth to him.
I began sobbing uncontrollably. To say I was petrified was an understatement. I just wanted my mum. I couldn't get my head around going to bed one night and waking up in a different century."
Naomi, who lives in Manchester with 11-year-old son Leo, added: "In my mind, John Major was still the Prime Minister and the only President Bush I'd ever heard of was George Senior.
"Facebook, Google and YouTube sounded like they were completely made up. And the first time I saw Leo play on his Xbox and interact with the TV, I was so shocked I spat out my tea."
Naomi, now 35, was diagnosed as suffering from transient global amnesia - a form of acute memory loss brought on by stress.
When it struck she was struggling to cope with studying for a psychology degree at the same time as raising Leo and running her own homeopathy business.
The "episodic" part of her memory completely shut down, meaning she lost all emotional recollections.
But her "semantic" memory was still intact, meaning she could remember things she had repeated over time, like how to drive.
Helped by friends, relatives, journals and diaries she had kept, Naomi has spent the last three years piecing together her lost life - and getting to know Leo again.
She said: "At 15, I thought I would have conquered half the planet by the time I was 32.
"It was a massive shock to discover I was just an ordinary single mum driving a battered old Fiat.
"My best friend and sister had to take over all communication for me. I had no idea how to work my mobile phone and had no concept of email.
"For the first few months, I was desperately trying to make sense of who I was. At night I'd lie awake and cry, longing to be back at school, when all I had to worry about was the boys I had crushes on and getting caught drinking in the park.
"But slowly I started to get used to the world again."
Naomi, who has now finally regained a full memory, added: "It wasn't fun, like Michael J Fox in Back To The Future. I'd fallen asleep in a world of endless possibilities and woken up in a nightmare."
http://www.thesun.co...oolgirl-15.html
Of course, the source isn't entirely reliable.
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As long as the dark foundation of our nature, grim in its all-encompassing egoism, mad in its drive to make that egoism into reality, to devour everything and to define everything by itself, as long as that foundation is visible, as long as this truly original sin exists within us, we have no business here and there is no logical answer to our existence.
Imagine a group of people who are all blind, deaf and slightly demented and suddenly someone in the crowd asks, "What are we to do?"... The only possible answer is, "Look for a cure". Until you are cured, there is nothing you can do.
And since you don't believe you are sick, there can be no cure.
- Vladimir Solovyov