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On one day in June, Katie Couric couldn’t recall who was president or the names of some of her newer family members.
In a July 6 Substack post, the 69-year-old journalist opened up about her recent overnight hospitalization and the diagnosis she received after experiencing a medical episode that caused her to “remember nothing” from her participation in the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado.
Her memories from “about noon” until “at least 7 p.m.” on Saturday, June 27, “will stay in a big, black hole,” Couric wrote. Though she took part in two panels that afternoon, Couric has “no idea what we talked about, or of what occurred when the panels ended.”
Her husband of over a decade, John Molner, wrote in the newsletter that he’d noticed “nothing unusual” about her performance, but he thought she “appeared weak and dizzy” after the final panel. An EMT and a doctor in the audience evaluated Couric and found her “pulse was slightly elevated and her blood pressure was a bit high, but nothing deeply worrying.”
“She knew who I was and could answer a few other basic questions,” he wrote. However as they left the venue, Molner noticed “Katie was definitely not all there.”
They went to an Aspen hospital where Couric was asked about the date (July 2024, she said) the president (she answered President Joe Biden), her grandchildren’s names (she couldn’t remember having a three-week-old granddaughter) and her daughter Carrie’s boyfriend’s name. That’s when the doctor called to “initiate stroke protocol.”
“She reintroduced herself to the nurses every time they came into the room. I felt like Bill Murray in ‘Groundhog Day’ as she repeatedly asked me the same questions: ‘What was I doing before we got to the hospital?’ ‘Why am I at the hospital?'” Molner wrote.
He continued, “Over the course of the next several hours, she asked me a version of those questions dozens of times. I’d answer, and a few minutes later (sometimes sooner), she’d ask the same question!”
Katie Couric was diagnosed with transient global amnesia
When an MRI didn’t show evidence of a stroke, Couric was diagnosed with transient global amnesia, or sudden, temporary memory loss. Her husband described the experience as “a very weird neural episode that’s pretty uncommon and, at least in most cases, is a ‘one and done’ experience.”
Couric speculated whether the medical event was caused by altitude, dehydration, stress or lack of sleep but found “the cause seems to be as mysterious as the brain itself.”
She cited a 2023 article published in The New England Journal of Medicine that says “The typical case is characterized by a sudden, complete inability to retain new information, lasting for several hours, in a middle-aged or older person, with preservation of alert and all other cognitive functions.”
“During an episode, anterograde amnesia occurs, with an inability to retain new information for more than a few seconds, and retrograde amnesia extends backward for several hours, days, or longer. The predicament experienced by the patient is frequently disclosed by repetitive stereotyped questions,” according to the article. “All other functions are normal.”
“While this was a freaky occurrence, it could have been much more serious,” Couric wrote. “So ultimately, I’m relieved – even though several hours of a Saturday in June will always be missing for me.”