This Surviving & Thriving segment is presented by Florida Hospital. With the right kind of care and support and the right attitude, it’s possible to not only survive life’s greatest challenges but to thrive in the aftermath.

Su Meck’s story is one of the most devastating and shocking stories you’ll ever hear. While it is a story of profound loss, of incomprehensible challenges and of heartbreaking struggle, it’s also a story of how one woman faced up to putting the pieces of her shattered life back together. 

Every year in this country, 1.5 million people suffer a traumatic brain injury. Each one is tragic, but most of them are not as unusual as Su’s. She writes about her experiences in her book, “I Forgot to Remember: A Memoir of Amnesia.”

Su takes us back to the freak accident in her kitchen that stole her life from her at the age of 22. Not only were Su’s memories gone, but she had to re-learn everything, from eating to counting and even how to act. She says she reverted to a childlike existence, with a very limited vocabulary and the lack of knowledge of how to exist or to parent her two young children. 

Even more than 20 years later, Su explains how she’s still trying to re-learn things and how she still struggles with memories. 

She was content to simply exist. After her own children grew up and left for college, she decided she wanted to do that, too. She first enrolled in a community college and now she’s about to graduate from the prestigious Smith College. 

Su explains why she wrote the book and how she helps others with TBI to understand what’s happening with them.