Until December, 2008, Scott Bolzan was a retired NFL star, a pilot and CEO of an Arizona private-jet leasing company.
And then a week before Christmas, he slipped in the bathroom at work and hit his head. When he awoke, he had no memory of who he was or anything about his previous life. He didn't recognize his wife or kids, and had no memory of ever loving them.
Doctors diagnosed the 46-year-old with profound retrograde amnesia, saying he had one of the most severe cases they had seen.
Bolzan has been told he will likely never recover memories of his past, but can form new ones – including the memory he now has of the day he woke in hospital.
"It was frightening. Everything was new. I didn't know what a hospital was, what a doctor was, or a nurse," he told CTV's Canada AM from New York.
"Seeing my wife for the first time, I had no idea what a wife was or how you interact with a wife. I didn't know who I was so nothing else made sense."
Slowly, over the least three years, he has had to relearn everything, from the terminology for everyday items, to current affairs to the Bible. He admits it hasn't been easy.
"It's the only life I know and it's horrifying. There's nothing fun about this," he said, adding that it grows easier with time.
"At this stage in my recovery, it has become manageable, one day at a time," he said.
With the help of his wife Joan, Bolzan has just released a memoir of his recovery, entitled, "My Life Deleted."
Joan Bolzan concedes the last three years have been "very, very difficult."
"It was like grieving the loss of a husband and he was sitting right there," she said.
She said it's been a struggle to get her husband to relearn the world and his own history. At first, she worried that she wouldn't be able to teach him about the emotions he used to have for her.
"I knew I could get support from my family and my friends and my faith; I just didn't know if Scott would fall in love with me again," she said.
Joan says what has happened to their family "could happen to anybody at any time, where your life changes upside down and how are you going to pick yourself and move forward.
But some have questioned Bolzan's story. The New York Post printed a story recently in which they quoted a neurologist who said it's very unusual for someone to lose their entire memory and yet still be able to function in every other way.
That report noted that Bolzan had filed for bankruptcy in 2002 and had faced financial trouble brought on by a number of lawsuits lodged against his jet leasing company.
Bolzan has not responded to those allegations, but noted in a blog on his website in 2009 that he was not interested in "a free ride."
He wrote, "I am starting to realize that not everyone is going o be sympathetic to my injury and condition and that some people are going to do whatever they feel to try and hurt you more than you already are. All I can say is that I did not ask to fall and I certainly did not ask to have a traumatic brain injury resulting in retrograde amnesia."
Bolzan says he looks forward to the future, though with little clear idea of what it holds.
"That's one of the difficult parts of having this condition is I have a hard time looking for the future. I have a hard time conceptualizing things," he said.
"But I look at the world with a fresh set of eyes. I look forward to each day. It's nice to not have any prejudices and pre-conceived notions. And I look forward to making new fond memories that hopefully will last me a lifetime."
