Michelle Philpots Can't Remember Last 20 Years

(CANVAS STAFF REPORTS) - Michelle Philpots never leaves the year 1994.

The British woman has anterograde amnesia, caused by head injuries she suffered in two vehicle crashes more than 20 years ago. Profiled during a recent interview on the Today Show , Philpots said she wakes up every morning thinking it is 1994, which is the last year she can fully remember.

"Right at the beginning for me, it was heartbreaking, knowing that I was different," she told Today host Matt Lauer. "I didn't want to be different."

Anterograde amnesia, caused by traumatic events such as a car crash, allows the brain to remember past events but can recall more recent items.

Rutgers University's Memory Loss & The Brain newsletter said while facts and events are often forgotten, the memory for skills is often spared, which means a person can be taught a new skill such as how to play a game. The person may not remember learning but will sometimes still have the skills.

According to MSNBC, Philpots' condition was caused by a 1985 motorcycle crash and made worse by a serious car crash five years later. She was diagnosed with epilepsy in 1994 as she started to become more forgetful, leading her to lose her office job when she copied the same document repeatedly during her shift.

The Sun newspaper reported that Philpots now has no short-term memory. She forgets where she's going when she leaves the house and will get places but not know why she is there.

Her husband Ian told the Sun that he shows her their wedding album to remind her they are married. She also uses hundreds of post it notes and has constant reminders on her cell phone.

Each day she awakes with no memory of the previous day.

Through the ordeal she maintains her sense of humor, joking that she has never seen the same TV show twice and saying that every joke she hears is just as funny as the first time.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , about 1.7 million people in the United States sustain a traumatic brain injury each year through causes such as car crashes. Such injuries can range from  mild, such as a brief change in mental consciousness, to severe such as an extended period of unconsciousness or amnesia.

Signs that it's more serious include forgetting an experience, forgetting how to drive or forgetting recent events. Other warning signs include not being able to remember ever having known a particular person and a loss of function, confusion or decreasing alertness.

Such injuries can cause epilepsy and other conditions such as Alzheimer's disease that become worse with age.