I woke up in hospital and couldn’t recognise my kids – now face blindness means I can’t tell them apart from strangers
WALKING down the street, Mary Smelczerczyk sees a tall, bearded man ahead of her so she smiles and nods, aware it could be her son. However it is pure guesswork, as she can no longer tell her own kids and grandkids apart from people she’s never met before. Former childcare worker Mary, 58, is living […]
WALKING down the street, Mary Smelczerczyk sees a tall, bearded man ahead of her so she smiles and nods, aware it could be her son.
However it is pure guesswork, as she can no longer tell her own kids and grandkids apart from people she’s never met before.
Former childcare worker Mary, 58, is living with prosopagnosia – also known as face blindness – as a result of a brain haemorrhage she suffered 22 years ago.
The condition means she can’t recognise anyone, including her own family. In fact, should her children walk up to her in the middle of the street, she wouldn’t have a clue who they were unless they spoke to her or she recognised their clothes.
Hull mum Mary was diagnosed with the condition after she collapsed at her home when she was 36 years old.
After being rushed into hospital she was placed into a coma and only woke up days later, completely unaware of where she was.
Shockingly, Mary also lost almost a whole lifetime of memories… She woke up believing she was a child whose parents were still alive, while she also forgot her former marriage and subsequent divorce, as well as having her three children.
While her memories slowly began to return in the years that followed, she still couldn’t recognise a single face around her – and still can’t now, more than two decades later.
Now, after Netflix released South Korean limited series My Holo Love – about a woman with face blindness who falls in love with a humanlike hologram – Mary shares her story and how she’s learned to live with such a rare condition.
‘My brain was going to explode’
Mary was a single mum of three kids, while also in the middle of adopting a fourth son, when she suffered a horrifying collapse at home 22 years ago.
“I remember I had been suffering from a migraine and all of a sudden I collapsed on the floor. I thought it was a really bad migraine but it turns out I was having a brain haemorrhage,” she exclusively tells the Sun Online.
“It took days for them to find out what had happened… They did a lumbar puncture and everything like that thinking I must have caught some kind of virus.
“They eventually had to put me into an induced coma and I was in that coma for quite some time, I can’t remember how long.”
Mary eventually underwent an operation to reduce swelling on three blood vessels in her brain, one of which had burst.
“My brain was going to explode. If my sisters hadn’t got me into hospital when they did, they’ve told me I could have been dead,” she says.
“If you have an accident and the skull opens, the blood comes out. But mine was trapped inside and it was squashing my brain. It essentially squashed all my memories.”
‘I thought I’d been in some sort of war’
While physically, Mary appeared to be recovering well in the weeks that followed, what many of her family didn’t immediately realise was that she was living her own personal hell – as she had completely forgotten more than half of her life and could no longer recognise anyone around her.
“When I first came round I got really confused, I couldn’t understand [what was happening],” she says.
“I’d gone back to being a child, I couldn’t remember being married or having children or anything,” she recalls.
Her memories of the three months she spent in hospital remain blurry even now, but Mary says she can recall convincing herself she must have survived a war.
“I remember being on some sort of trolley and being taken down to a scanner on one day,” she says.
“Above me were lots of pipes. Well the only other place I’ve seen that was in old bomb shelters, so I thought I must have been in one of those.
“Your brain tries to make sense out of what’s going on around you… But nobody put two and two together at first and didn’t realise that I didn’t recognise the people around me.”
Asked how long it took for her family to realise, Mary says: “It took quite some time because I would smile and nod. I thought everybody else was crazy, not me, because they were talking to me strangely about children and getting out and going home to ‘my house’, and showing me pictures of people I didn’t know.
“You go back to being a child. You try and protect yourself as a child, you smile, you nod, you think, ‘how can I escape from here?’”
Mary says one of the most traumatic moments when she finally returned home was being told by her family that her parents had in fact died years before.
“I was absolutely and utterly distraught to hear they’d died,” she admits.
‘I didn’t recognise myself in the mirror’
While Mary spent years in a state of confusion over what had happened, she began to read old diary entries to try and remember parts of her life.
However, while she could recognise her handwriting, photos were a different matter altogether – and Mary couldn’t even recognise herself in the mirror.
“When I looked in the mirror after my operation, I didn’t even recognise that I was older,” she explains. “I didn’t even recognise the reflection looking back at me.
“Then you see photos of someone wearing your clothes and you think, who is that in my clothes? Then you realise it’s you.
“It took me a long time. It took me seven years to fully understand that I wasn’t well.”
Having become aware of how advanced Mary’s condition was, her sister moved in with her at first to help her look after her kids.
The children were only aged eight, 10 and 12 when she returned home, so didn’t understand exactly what had happened to their mum. They simply knew she had been ill, and struggled to recognise them.
However, as they got older and this continued, it became somewhat of a family joke.
“My children thought it was hilarious. Looking back now, they realise how horrendous it must have been, but they were just children at the time,” she says.
Asked what she sees when she looks at people’s faces now, Mary adds: “They have similar features, eyes, nose, mouth, but I am unable to distinguish between plain, beautiful, young or old.
“If someone has a truly remarkable distinguishing feature on their face it has often had to be pointed out to me, I look for hair colour and style, style and colour of glasses, beards, I don’t even notice bad teeth or even no teeth.”
‘I nearly took someone else’s child’
While Mary’s memories have largely returned now, she still struggles to recall the years immediately before and after her collapse.
However, her prosopagnosia has remained and she cannot tell a single face apart in a crowd – including her own children.
“My daughter goes out with me now and it’s a running joke, she’ll take her cardigan off and say, ‘you were talking to a stranger mum!’” she laughs.
While at first Mary admits she was worried to leave the house, over fears she’d appear rude when old friends approached her and she wouldn’t be able to recognise them, she’s since found the strength to face her fears as those around her have grown aware of her condition.
But it came after a particularly chilling experience.
“I had a problem at a local nursery, one of my friends asked if I could go and pick her daughter up,” she says.
“I knew she was wearing a pretty red dress, so at the allotted time I went across to pick her up and there was a little girl in a red dress. She was putting her arms up so I picked her up.
What is prosopagnosia?
Prosopagnosia is also known as face blindness and essentially means you can’t recognise people’s faces.
It can either affect people from birth (developmental), or come as a result of brain damage, often following a stroke or head injury (acquired).
Many people who have face blindness are unable to recognise close members of their family.
Many coping mechanisms include memorising people’s clothes, listening to their voices or focusing on their hairstyle.
In more severe cases, prosopagnosia can also affect people’s ability to recognise objects or even navigate.
Several studies have indicated that as many as 1 in 50 people may have developmental prosopagnosia (around 1.5 million people in the UK).
There is no specific treatment for the condition, and researchers continue to look into what may cause it and whether there is a genetic element for some.
Source: NHS UK.
“I said the magic word to get out of the nursery, and then another little girl came up in a red dress. I was about to walk out with someone else’s child. It’s so frightening.
“It really scared me so I’ve never done it again. But it also reinforced why I couldn’t go back to work, because I worked for social services. I was putting people at risk, but I didn’t understand that when I was ill.”
Asked if she’d recognise her own kids and grandkids now, she says: “No. My eldest grandchild won’t be happy with me for saying this, but I was so blessed when she was born because she was born with a birth mark on her head.
“I was so happy because I knew she was mine. I can recognise her when I can’t recognise anyone else.
“I tend to buy stupid great big bows and things for my grandkids. Horrible great big jumpers and things!
“My son is one of these with no hair on their head and lots on their chin. So I walk down the streets smiling at all these men with no hair, just in case!”
Describing what she sees when she looks at people, Mary says they simply appear like strangers to her.
So, what is prosopagnosia (face blindness)?
Face blindness is thought to affect around two per cent of the world’s population (around one in 50 people), according to the Department of Psychology at Bournemouth University.
It can either affect people from birth (developmental), or it can develop following a brain injury or damage (acquired) – like in Mary’s case.
Essentially, people with the condition can’t recognise other people’s faces at all.
The university’s professor of psychology, Sarah Bate, says: “While some people cope relatively well with face blindness, using sometimes very elaborate compensatory strategies to identify familiar people, others struggle more profoundly.
“It can be particularly difficult to identify someone using their hairstyle or clothing when they are met out of context, and this can cause embarrassment or social anxiety to the face blind individual.
“People with face blindness see faces completely normally – there aren’t distortions or blurring… The problem is in distinguishing between different faces – face blind people can’t see the small differences between people, so all faces look the same to them.”
While it’s fairly rare, Hollywood actor Brad Pitt previously revealed he thinks he may suffer from prosopagnosia himself. He told Esquire he hadn’t been tested or diagnosed yet, but added: “It’s a mystery to me, man. I can’t grasp a face, and yet I come from such a design/aesthetic point of view. I am going to get it tested.”
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He’s not the only well-known face who believes they have it, as Stephen Fry and Duncan Bannatyne have also spoken of having face blindness too.
For Mary, she’s come out the other side and now manages her own condition as best she can, by focusing on clothes, voices and aid from those who know her.
“I’m a rotund shape. And I always say, the Lord made me this shape because I bounce back. I can bounce back from anything!” she insists.