Wordsmoker

Hey. Remember the last time you had really good sex? THEN YOU’RE NOT DOING IT RIGHT. Yes, that’s correct – the bar has been set a bit higher now. You can keep your multiple orgasms and back-clawing and screamings and moanings and impromptu Al Sharpton impersonations or light-but-intense squeaking, because there’s a new measure of pleasure in town, ladies and perverts – coming so hard you instantly develop amnesia.

Yes, my new chat-up line with the Ladies of Central Scotland is “drop yer knickers and I’ll give you Transient Global Amnesia”. Because, according to CNN, that’s what’s happening OR HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN THAT?

One August morning, Alice and her husband, Scott, had sex. That’s when things became confusing. Rather than appearing pleased, Alice, 59, seemed disoriented.

As they lay in bed, Scott (the couple asked that their last name not be used) flicked on the television, which was showing the Olympics. This perplexed Alice. “Is there an Olympics?” she asked. This was during the Michael Phelps mania, when the swimmer seemed to be everywhere.

“Are you sure there is an Olympics?” Alice asked again.

Scott recalled, “I saw that something was wrong, so I asked her, ‘OK what day is it?’ “

Alice appeared even more perplexed.

“Who’s our president?” he quizzed.

“Bill Clinton,” she answered. This was 2008.

Scott darted out of bed and called 911. The paramedics suspected a stroke and rushed the befuddled Alice to the emergency room.

Personally I would’ve diagnosed “Olympic Boredom”, but that’s why I was thrown out of Medical School in the first place. Blaming everything on the Olympics.

For decades, doctors described cases of a rare neurological condition that usually occurred in patients over age 50. Neurologists noted that patients knew their identities, but couldn’t retain recent memory, where they were and how they got there. They showed no other symptoms.

Sex is one of the major triggers for the baffling medical condition called transient global amnesia in which patients lose their ability to retain immediate memory.

TGA usually occurs after the person engages in strenuous activity — such as having sex, vigorously exercising, suddenly immersing into icy or hot water, straining to dig a stuck car or even bumping the head.

What this essentially says is that my favorite pastime of placing giant plastic wildebeest in the middle of the road so older women swerve to avoid it and end up crashing through a fence into a neighboring field so I can chase after them with my pants around my ankles while they panic and run into a river to get away from me but bang their heads off a low-lying branch and collapse semi-conscious and wet on the bank could be harmful to them? Back to match.com for me, then.

“The unifying thing about each of them is they produce a sudden and significant change in blood flow,” said Dr. Louis Caplan, professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School.

Oh, it’s from Harvard, eh? SAFETY SCHOOL.

Alice arrived at the hospital around 8 a.m. in seemingly perfect health. As medical staff poked and prodded, Alice cheerfully peppered them and her husband with questions.

Isn’t the fact that Alice was “poked and prodded” in the first place a contributing factor to her current state?

“This is actually a well-known precipitator. One of the things people have done to look at transient global amnesia is to look at frequency of various precipitants and sex always comes out as one of the most common,” said Caplan, a leading stroke expert at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, who was not associated with Alice’s care.

“It usually is after climax that it develops,” he said about its onset.

Your Editor is a “well-known precipitator”, but always uses protection. Yes, I record every sex act with a Dictaphone and a Polaroid camera, just in case she forgets the next day.

Although Alice recovered fully, she still cannot remember what happened that morning. The last thing she remembered was going to bed the night before with a slight pain in the right, rear area of her head.

Yep – I’m beginning to think Alice’s husband triggered this with what sounds like a rather niche attempt at foreplay.

(thanks to BJonston for the throbbing tip)