Actually, Torsten Schmidt (name changed) was no longer an active football player. But in 2016, the then 46-year-old helped out with his team again. During the game he suddenly fell down and suffered a heart attack. He was clinically dead for a few minutes, but rescue workers were able to revive him.
At the hospital, doctors put him in an induced coma. Weeks of uncertainty followed for Schmidt’s family: “Nobody knew whether I would even wake up again,” he tells FOCUS online. But the miracle happened: after a few weeks, Torsten Schmidt opened his eyes.
The joy was suddenly dampened: Torsten’s memory was as if erased
However, the initial joy was suddenly dampened: Torsten could no longer remember anything. Not only the day of the accident had disappeared from his memory, but also every memory of his life: “I no longer knew what a chair was or a table – 46 years were simply completely erased. Everyone just said ‘Awesome!’ – whatever that means…,” says Torsten Schmidt. However, his brain has been reliably storing new memories ever since he woke up from his coma.
During the cardiac arrest, there was a lack of oxygen in his brain. Even when he was in an induced coma, the doctors prepared Schmidt’s family for possible consequential damage. At this point in time, however, they were not yet able to estimate the extent of the impact.
Today they know: The lack of oxygen caused a so-called agnosia in his brain. This means: Torsten Schmidt’s person with all of his memories and knowledge was wiped out. “In people with acquired brain damage, we often experience that parts of the old memory are retained and the storage of new information is disrupted. That’s not the case with Mr. Schmidt,” explains Stephan Bamborschke, head physician at the Center for Post-Acute Neurorehabilitation (PAN) in Berlin. There, Schmidt found support for 18 months in his fight back to life. He released Stephan Bamborschke from his duty of confidentiality for the interview with FOCUS online.
The realization was followed by a hole – and then the fight
A few weeks after waking up from his coma, when Schmidt gradually realized what had happened to him and what impact it would have on his life, he fell into a hole. “Everything was so stressful. I just didn’t want to anymore.” He spent a week in a psychiatric hospital because of severe depression, “but then I begged my sister to get me out of there.” Because the people there had completely different problems than he did.
Psychiatry was followed by a stay in the PAN center. There the doctors and psychologists put together an individual program for him. Doctors, neuro-psychologists, speech therapists, occupational therapists and physiotherapists took care of his rehabilitation for a total of 18 months. “I have never experienced a case like this before,” explains Stephan Bamborschke, who has been working in neurology for over 20 years. Schmidt also remembers: “The employees at the facility didn’t know what to expect.” Because although the center specializes in neurological diseases, there has never been such a severe case of agnosia there.
“Threw money in the trash can”: Torsten’s entire knowledge of the world was wiped out
“At first I tried to eat my jacket and threw money in the trash can because I didn’t know what to do with it,” says Schmidt. Chief physician Bamborschke explains that what is known as “apperceptive agnosia” means that those affected perceive everything with their eyes but cannot put it into any context. With semantic agnosia, the part of the memory in which people store their so-called world knowledge is not available. Mr. Schmidt has both and he had to painstakingly retrain himself to do so during his two years of rehabilitation.
The professor of neurology explains that those affected usually find it very difficult to store new information in the brain. But Torsten Schmidt is surprisingly good at it. He also developed an awareness of his illness. This is an important prerequisite for his ability to learn.
“Torsten Schmidt has memorized what looks like and where he can find something.” And all this despite the fact that along with his memory, his ability to read and write has also been lost. “I don’t recognize letters. It took weeks before I could write my name,” explains Schmidt. He records his memories and knowledge using the voice memo function of a tablet. “No one would have ever thought that one day I would move back into my own apartment or work.” But Torsten Schmidt showed everyone.
“One of my greatest achievements is learning to tell the time.”
In September 2018, he left the PAN center without having to return for the first time since his cardiac arrest. He moved into his own, sheltered apartment. But to make this possible, he has had a long struggle. He had to relearn many routines, including how to orientate himself in his surroundings. “In order to cope with everyday life, it is important that Mr. Schmidt gets used to some routines. And the only way to do that is to repeat things over and over again. Then new synapses are switched in the brain,” explains chief physician Bamborschke.
“I wouldn’t have made it through this without my family.”
And that is difficult. “One of my greatest successes is learning to tell the time,” says Schmidt happily. He also knows: “Without my family, I wouldn’t have gotten through all of this.” Because she hasn’t left his side since day one. Father, brother-in-law, sisters, brother, mother – they have all taken care of “their Torsten” for the last two years. He also has a son, but he is not married.
At the PAN center, the industrial foreman, who later retrained as a gardener and then as a social worker, learned a new job: processing wood. Because the memory of his profession has also disappeared with the rest of his memory in the black cloud of the past. But he likes his new job: “You have a reason to get up in the morning,” explains Schmidt. Some of the pieces he made himself even moved into the new apartment with him.
Old flames are flaring up again: things have sparked again between Torsten and his ex-girlfriend
In his new life, which began in September, he works in a workshop for disabled people and lives in his own apartment. His new old flame lives right across the street: Claudia (name changed). “We were already a couple before, but no longer at the time of the cardiac arrest,” explains Schmidt, who can only recount his memories through stories. “When I left the rehab over Pentecost and went to my family, we met. And it worked again,” he says with a noticeable smile on his face. He “recognized” her voice, and her face also seemed somehow familiar to him. But he couldn’t place it.
Voices and music are generally the only things that Schmidt can actually “remember”: “I still know all the song lyrics by heart – whether in English or German,” he laughs. And that has helped him a lot: “Music is the best therapy”.
Unclear whether his memories will ever return
Will his memory ever return? The leading doctor at the PAN Center, Stephan Bamborschke, has no answer: “The problem with brain damage caused by a lack of oxygen is that the changes are rather diffusely distributed across individual layers of the cerebral cortex and the neuronal network. In the CT you usually don’t see any circumscribed lesions – at most minimal changes. We don’t know why his old memory is erased. Maybe just one access is blocked.”
Thanks to Schmidt’s good learning skills and with the help of the career-promoting workshop in which he works after his stay in the hospital, his chances of fighting his way back into a regular everyday life are good: “Maybe one day he will even find a job on the primary labor market again.”
“I saw rain for the first time in my life”
Shortly before he was allowed to leave the rehabilitation clinic in September, he revealed to FOCUS Online: “Starting all over again is somehow nice.” He compares himself to his nephew, who is just a few months old. He could now get to know everything in a new way – as uninhibited as a small child: “I saw snow for the first time in my life. And rain!” he says happily. Outside of the clinic he now wants to “rediscover the world”.
By the way, his passion for football has not gone away: “The first thing I will do is secure access to all the football games on my television,” explains Torsten Schmidt with a laugh. But what he is most looking forward to is his 15-year-old son: “He needs his father. And I need him.”