Rare Disease: A Beautiful Girl Loses Her Memory Every Day

A year and a half ago, a sophomore named Caitlin Little from Greensboro, North Carolina, suffered a concussion during a cross country training, and thus developed a rare amnesia. Since all of her new daily memories are erased on the night, she wakes up every morning thinking it is October, 2017.

It has been 17 months since Caitlin was left with a concussion during the high school cross country training, but everything seems like yesterday for the 16-year-old girl. On October 12, 2017, one of her teammates stumbled and hit her in the head.

At that time, both the girl's coach and neurologist believed her memory loss was merely a sequela of the serious concussion, and the effects would be gone within a few weeks. But as time went by, Caitlin didn't recover as expected, even until now. So, her parents have to wake her up softly every day to tell her what date it is and explain about the accident two years ago.  

The most common reaction after hearing about her condition was to be very surprised or questioned: “how can that be?”. Whenever she did so, her father would ask her to read a journal on her bedside, in which everything happened after the accident was taken down. And if she had any questions, her father would come and see her in 15 to 20 minutes.

Caitlin's anterograde amnesia makes schooling difficult for her because what she learned cannot be retained in her memory. She couldn't even remember her teacher's name, so she had to write it down on a binder. Tracy Helms, her special education teacher, said, every morning, Caitlin would act as if they have never seen each other before.

Despite they have visited many doctors, no one was able to solve her problem, as a result, Caitlin’s memory continues to be reset every night while she sleeps. Reportedly, her treatment cost is $1,000 a day currently. Since her parents are unemployed right now, the spending is snowballing.

Fortunately, after Caitlin's tragedy was made into a documentary, the family has received financial support through the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe.

Caitlin's family hope that one day, a switch in her brain would turn on again so that she would be able to retain her new memories once again. But meanwhile, the teenager has also learned how to cope with her rare amnesia.