Young bride-to-be wakes up from coma with entire memory wiped after devastating brain infection
The marine biologist can't remember herself or her own family
A YOUNG bride-to-be woke up from a coma with no memory of her past life after she contracted a brain infection.
Fran Geall, 25, felt like "an entirely different person", unable to recognise her friends and family, as a result of an auto-immune condition encephalitis.
The marine biologist, from Falmouth, Cornwall, has also lost all memory of her university degrees which cost her a total of £50,000.
Fran said she can no longer recognise her niece or the family of her fiance, 29-year-old Stacey Tonkins.
She said: "With people I'm told I've known for years, it can be like meeting them for the first time, which is really sad.
"I also feel like I'm meeting myself again, because I have absolutely no idea who I was before all this was."
In March this year Fran began suffering terrible migraines that left her bed-bound.
One morning she began having a seizure in bed and Stacey had to call an ambulance to take her to Ashford Hospital, Kent, where she was put into an induced coma.
When she woke up a week later, she was unable to walk, read or speak and couldn't remember much of her past life.
Encephalitis is an auto-immune condition which causes the body's own white blood cells to attack the brain cells, damaging memory functions.
Before becoming ill Fran had completed an undergraduate degree in marine biology as well as a Master of Science in sustainable agriculture.
She is now trying to relearn the content of her degrees, but she has to be careful not to over-strain her mind or she will risk another seizure.
Fran said: "Doing the simplest things, like using a computer or navigating around a supermarket, have now become very difficult.
"But what is heartbreaking for me is that my intellect, which was like my superpower, is now gone, and all the years I spent learning facts and learning about the natural world has been wiped out like chalk on a blackboard."
Fran landed her "dream job" back in January as a business development manager for an oyster company in Whitstable, Kent.
She became engaged to teacher Stacey in 2015.
She said: "When Stacey and my family visited me in hospital, I knew instinctively that they were people I loved, but I couldn't remember anything about them, apart from very minimal, basic details.
"I couldn't speak, I couldn't walk and I had no idea who anyone around me was or what had happened to me."
Fran's condition gradually improved when she was given a plasma exchange 10 days after the initial seizure, which replaced the white blood cells that had been attacking her brain.
She was then able to speak to write and has begun a daily diary, although it hasn't helped to jog her memory.
She said: "The doctors have no idea if I will ever regain my memories, so I'm living with the prospect of potentially having to relearn everything I ever knew."
Once discharged from hospital after five weeks, she returned to work but was unable to continue.
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She now lives in Falmouth with Stacey's family and is continuing the process of getting to know them and herself.
“People say that I used to crack a lot of jokes, and I'm starting to do that again now.
"But I suppose when you're in a situation like mine, what else can you do?"
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