Why this Aussie mum 'forgot' she'd won $50,000
An Aussie mum has forgotten all about $50,000 she won in a radio competition.
It’s believed the 50-year-old Perth woman has a rare type of amnesia which can strike at any time.
Leah Chatfield can’t remember being told live on air that she’d won a radio competition worth tens of thousands of dollars.
“Literally that whole day from 8am until about 3.30pm, I don’t remember any of it,” she told 7 News.
Ms Chatfield said she first realised something wasn’t quite right when she was exercising with a friend.
“There was probably 20 minutes where I was just repeating myself, and I don’t remember any of that,” she said.
Ms Chatfield said she had suffered multiple concussions over the years, from falling off monkey bars as a child to falling off her bike as an adult.
It was only after having an MRI that she was finally diagnosed with the rare amnesia.
‘We don’t really understand what the causes are’
“We don’t really understand what the causes are, and there is no way to treat it at this stage,” Curtin University’s Dr Andrew Lavender said.
Dr Lavender claimed new research coming out of the United States suggested multiple head knocks suffered by athletes could cause early onset dementia.
While Ms Chatfield is $50,000 richer, more research needs to be done to determine what her future holds.
She has a warning for athletes in heavy contact sports where head injuries are a risk – and for parents of sports-playing children.
“I think people ignore concussions, especially on a football field, and those concussions will come back,” she said.
