A surgeon who has spent more than a decade in intensive care after a stroke says his memory of the procedure is “not the same” as it was 10 years ago.
Dr. Guy Gupta, a surgeon at the University of Southern California who had undergone a successful brain surgery three years ago, said the brain of his patient was “a lot different” than what he had experienced in 2010.
“The difference between that patient and me is the extent to which they’re conscious,” Gupta said Thursday during a visit to the UCLA Medical Center.
Gupta, 57, said he had been diagnosed with severe brain damage about three years earlier that resulted in a loss of cognitive function and mental confusion.
The surgery took place in 2011 at UCLA’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where he was treated for aneurysms and a brain tumor.
Gupta had hoped to repair his damaged brain, but his prognosis was poor and he ended up needing multiple surgeries, including a brain transplant, to rebuild his left eye.
He had been discharged from the hospital in November 2011 and returned home in April of this year, but after months of being confined to his apartment, he was again discharged in June, only to be told he needed to have a surgery at UCLA.
Guptas doctors said he was still experiencing some of the symptoms of the stroke, including confusion, but said they had no idea why.
“I’m in a hospital in Los Angeles, in a very, very bad way, but my brain has been spared from the worst, so why am I still here?” he said.
“That’s what the neurologists told me was the problem, so I was like, well, I guess I need to get out of here.”
This surgery was supposed to fix everything.
It was supposed.
But it was just so badly damaged that it wasn’t good enough to get the operation done.
“Gupta’s wife, Laura, told the Associated Press that he was unable to find work because he was “unable to keep up with his bills and his medications.
“Laura Gupta has a stroke as well as severe memory loss, and is in a coma, and has struggled to find other work.
She said her husband was “not able to get through his life, and it’s very difficult to do what he does.”
Doctors say Gupta’s condition is a form of traumatic amnesia, which is a condition where the brain has “no recollection” of events that happened in the past, and that memory is difficult to restore.
In 2010, Gupta experienced an amnesia episode during his surgery and his memory was “less than perfect,” according to the New York Times.”
He did not have the same awareness or the same sense of the event that he had in 2010,” Dr. David Korn, the chief of neurology at the hospital, said at the time.”
It’s a very different memory than you would normally have in a person who has a brain injury,” Korn told the Times.
The Times reported that the stroke affected Gupta “more than anything else in his life,” and that his memory loss “has caused him to struggle with relationships, which has been difficult.”
He was able to “walk with his head up” on his shoulders in his sleep, he told the paper, but was unable “to remember things in the night that he’s known for 20 years.”
He also “wasn’t able to make a connection with his family” during his amnesia episodes, which he attributed to “the way I was raised.””
Guptas wife, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease three years before, has also struggled to recover. “
I was raised in an environment that taught me to love everybody.”
Guptas wife, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease three years before, has also struggled to recover.
He told The Associated Press she has difficulty remembering important details, including whether he is with her or her husband.
Laura Guptta, who is in her 50s, is still in a “frequent coma,” and the couple has not spoken to each other in almost a year, The Associated Post reported.