Now, Kim Denicola told Inside Edition, she's making new memories.
Imagine waking up one day and not recognizing your husband.
That's what happened to 56-year-old Kim Denicola, who came down with a splitting headache one day last October and blacked out in a church parking lot, only to come to with no memory of the past 40 years.
"I apparently was married," Denicola told Inside Edition. "I had a wedding."
She woke up at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to a nurse asking her questions.
"She said, 'Do you know what year it is?' And I said, 'Yes, it's 1980,'" Denicola said.
She couldn't remember her children or grandchildren. Her husband, David Denicola, was a perfect stranger.
"When I looked at him, he had tears in his eyes," Kim said. "I thought, 'Oh man. Something's not right here.' He said, 'I'm your husband.'"
She didn't even recognize herself.
"When I woke up, [I thought] I was about to turn 18," she said. "I looked in the mirror [and thought] 'This is not 18.'"
David hoped that old photos would jog his wife's memory, but no luck. She was suffering from transient global amnesia, sudden memory loss that is typically temporary, but that for Kim has persisted for months now. The cause is not known.
Nowadays, Kim is rediscovering how the world has changed over the past four decades. Her grandson has taught her how to use a computer and she's fascinated by the existence of cellphones.
Kim knows most of her memories could be gone for good, but she said she's not scared by that possibility.
"If the memories don't come back, I can make new ones," she said.
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