Real-life Groundhog Day Syndrome patient: Octogenarian forced to relive the same day over and over again due to rare disease
Wouldn’t it be miserable to relive the same experiences over and over again?
Popular films like Groundhog Day explored this memory phenomenon, but in a new case report, it was the reality of a man.
Researchers found he had a rare condition that made him think he was experiencing the same shows, movies, and books over and over.
The anonymous man, who was in his 80s, thought his e-book reader was malfunctioning and was giving him the same pages to read over and over again.
When he contacted the manufacturer, he was assured that everything was working normally, according to the report published in the journal BMJ Case Reports.
A retired man in the 80s thought his Kindle was malfunctioning and was giving him the same pages to read over and over again. He actually suffered from deja vu, the lingering false sense that events happen over and over.
MRIs of the patient’s brain showed signs of Alzheimer’s disease
He also had a technician repair his television because he thought it was broadcasting the same information over and over.
“Every day is a repeat of the day before… Every (television) session is the same,” the patient said.
“Wherever I go, the same people are on the side of the road, the same cars behind me with the same people in them…the same person comes out of the cars wearing the same clothes, carrying the same bags, saying the same things.’
‘Nothing is new.’
His family could not convince him that these were misconceptions.
The researchers called the phenomenon a thing of the past. Unlike the more familiar deja vu, or the feeling that something you are currently experiencing has already happened, deja vu is a lingering false sense that events are happening over and over again.
The patient had memory difficulties and tended to confuse two stories into one. The team carried out cognitive tests and scans of his brain and also found signs of Alzheimer’s disease.
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, a group of diseases that mark progressive and permanent cognitive decline.
The disease usually develops later in life, with 73% of patients diagnosed after age 75.
The researchers said deja vu was first described in 1896 as “a pathological form of deja vu.”
Although the disease is considered rare, the researchers said it has been seen in a handful of Alzheimer’s disease patients.
A similar case report from 2021 describes a past experience in an 84-year-old woman in Amsterdam, although these researchers ruled out dementia. The woman believed that TV shows and live sporting events were reruns, and she approached random people in public because she thought they were acquaintances.
The patient showed no signs of improvement after treatment.
“Unlike Groundhog Day however, the already lived does not tend to have happy endings,” the researchers wrote in the woman’s case.
In the case of the unnamed man, doctors attempted to treat him with immunotherapy, which is typically used in cancer cases to destroy malignant cells. The patient’s condition did not improve and he continued to show signs of Alzheimer’s for four years.