“I have to admit that I live moment to moment”. An extraordinary case of iatrogenic Wernicke's encephalopathy.

The case of Hiroshi Sekine is beyond the ordinary for three reasons:

1. he was observed for three years by the Japanese director Hirokatzu Koreeda, who narrated his life from 1994 to 1996 in the documentary Without Memory (1996, 84 minutes);

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2. we can follow the everyday life and the thoughts of an amnesiac about his condition;

3. highlights the devastating effects of the severe cuts to the Japanese National Health System and the responsibilities of physicians.

The film begins with an mri scan: the brain of Sekine after a severe thiamine deficiency resulting in lesions to the thalamus and the mammillary bodies.

Narrator:

"As we live our lives, memories of experiences painful and pleasant accumulate in our brains. These memories are fundamental to our individual identities".

Hiroshi Sekine presented the three symptoms of the Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome: 

- ophthalmoplegia (abnormal eye movements);




  - ataxia (movement disorder with loss of muscle coordination);


- severe anterograde amnesia (inability to learn new information and to create new memories) and mild retrograde amnesia (loss of past memories related to events that occurred 6-7 years before the encephalopathy).

There are 30 years of hystory inside me.

I know this is a strange question, but is this reality?

For more details see the Italian version: “Devo ammettere che vivo momento per momento”. Uno straordinario caso di encefalopatia di Wernicke iatrogena.