You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast. Mama Mea acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on. Hello Omeya Friedman and the team at Mumma Mea are bringing you over one hundred hours of the best of the best from across our award winning podcasts to give you the hot pod Summer of your dreams.
Here at No Filter, we have selected the very best stories of human resilience, of escaping from colts and tsunamis, of surviving in prison, surviving a landslide, surviving a broken heart, and so much more. Today, I'm bringing you the story of Abby Morgan, which originally aired in twenty twenty two and is probably still one of my favorite interviews of
all time. At the heart of Abby's story is a love story that goes very unexpectedly in a direction that nobody ever thinks when they say they're vows and can to spending their life with somebody. One day, Abby's husband woke up and did not know who she was. And I'm just going to let her tell the rest of the story. The extraordinary part of this, well, it's all extraordinary. Abby's a screenwriter. She is the writer and creator of one of my favorite TV shows of all time, The Split.
Watch that if you're looking for something to watch. It's absolutely brilliant about these women who are this family of women who are all divorce lawyers. And since then she has also written a Netflix series called Eric, which stars Benedict Cumberbatch. But this story isn't about her TV shows. It's about her own life, which is truly stranger and
more riveting than any fiction she could have written. The last few years of Abby Morgan's life would make an incredible TV show, although you might not really believe it because of the plot twists, the many many plot twists, and it all began on an ordinary day in her ordinary house in London, where Abby lived with her very lovely partner, Jacob and their two teenage kids and their dog. Back then in twenty eighteen, Jacob was an actor and
Abby was a superstar screenwriter. She still is a superstar screenwriter. She had already won Emmys and Bafter Awards for her work writing movies like Iron Lady, which starred Meryl Streep and my all time favorite TV show, The Split. Abby and Jacob had been together for twenty years. They weren't married for a bunch of reasons, but they were really solid, which made what happened over the next few years so unimaginable. Seriously, you could not make this up because nobody would believe you.
This is no filter. I'm Heya Friedman, and I don't want to tell you too much about what you're about to hear, because Abby's whole life is about storytelling and we don't want spoilers. But here's one thing I'll tell you. Abbie's husband woke up one day after coming out of a coma and he didn't know who she was. He knew everyone else, just not her.
The way he looked at me, I just thought there's something not right here. And at first I thought it was a general thing, but then I started to notice the delight in which he greeted his parents, you know, with a smile or hey dad.
Hey.
He wouldn't use my name, he'd go Hi like that to me. He was just off with me.
Abby has written a memoir about this astonishing time in her life. It's a story that's still unfolding, and her book is called This Is Not a Pity Memoir. She joined me from London to talk about it, and I have to tell you this is one of my favorite conversations that I've ever had on this podcast with one of the women I admire the most. Abby, tell me about your life before Jacob collapsed. I want to know, you know, what was normal, like? What did normal look like?
I think normal looked like. Lived in North London. You know, had two teenagers almost cooked fourteen and sixteen. Had been with Jake, my partner, for god like nearly eighteen years, and you know we'd had a very real, honest, brutal, brilliant marriage relationship, actually partnership, and I had. I mean, you never have a perception of yourself, really, I mean you do if you have a glass of wine and
you start to pig yourself what we think? You know, I've done a few films, but I never perceived myself. I'm always looking at everyone else, going, God, that's amazing. I love there. Well, I never put myself in that same group. So from my point of view, I was a jobing writer. I felt privileged, I felt lucky.
But when you say you were a jobbing writer and you've you're very modest. I've had a few films, you've had some extraordinary films like you wrote The Iron Lady with Meryl Street, you had written the first season of The Split, which had many huge success, You've done many many other films. Did you feel like you'd derived in your career.
Actually, the bottom line is I come from theater folk. You know, my mum was an actress, my dad was a TV director. So for me, it's like I'm in the family business. And you know, I've always described as like, you know, if you're an electrician, you know how to rewear a plug, if you're a plumber, you know how to unblock a sink. And so for me, the kind of world of the business has always been I've been realistic about it. I've known about the feast and farm,
and I grew up with that. I think one of the things that's been most amazing for me is to be able to go to a cashboard machine and not get my card swallowed, because that was my growing up. That was like praying that the cashpoint would like give you money, you know, And so I think financial stability for me has been far more important. And I'm not
even talking about massive wealth. You know, I probably could have done a lot more, but I think there was about a stability and a genuine where I think I have arrived as I work again and again with a very small group of people, and I've been doing that for the last ten fifteen years, maybe longer. So I feel like my method is very arrived, is very present, is very centered at the heart of what I do. So I feel very lucky that I don't write on other people's shows. I tend to think, I want to
write this. I can pitch an idea, I can sell an idea. I realized the privilege of that. I don't think I appreciated that fully, but I mentor a lot of young writers, and I see the journey they have to go on now. So I think, from my point of view is I did the thing I loved. I do the thing I love. That doesn't mean as like all of us, we don't wake up and want to just Internet shop all day and you know, lie and
watch some Netflix crap. But I definitely felt this sense of I was just like when I talk about my kids were cooked, they were starting to have their own lives. I could find some space in my day. I think Jake and I had gone through masses of ups and downs.
I think, you know, there are all those big issues about if you're successful and you live with someone who takes on the chart out, I don't have the same career, and then their career starts to happen and suddenly you're like, oh, wow, okay, how do I use the washing machine again?
You know?
You know, we had a very nineteen fifties housewife relationship. You know, I was very much like coming home and having a dry martini and dinner was good. And so there was a lot about our setup, which worked really well for me actually, but as a result of kind of what then happened, it really made me rethink about where I put my value. And I think my sense of myself, my identity was so close to my work because it's what I know best. Words is what I know best. You know, I talk too much. I'm not
good on silent, you know. I always feel like I have to oversell myself. So yeah, but I think on a basic level, I was in a pretty good place. Jacob had multiple stroosis, so obviously that we lived with the EBB and flow of that, but even that he was pretty high functioning on that he was working, So yeah, I think I was lucky.
Really, he was an actor. Yeah, you know, you talk about the nineteen fifties housewife dynamic, but in reverse. Was he always come to all with that? Was that a decision that you made early on in your relationship.
It very naturally felt like that in the beginning, because when I hit the ground with Jake, when we first met and we had our first our son, really really quickly with a year of being together. You know, we had Jesse, my boy and our boy, and I was right in the middle of shootings. I was just on the role of like my early mid thirties, and you know, I was starting to get the bafters and the you know, the nods, the Golden Globe but nods and all of that stuff. So it was very giddy. So we had
quite a giddy time. And you know, we definitely had childcare and help at the beginning, but Jake was just Jake loved it. Jake has always been absolutely at the heart of the home. He's the master of fun, and he just naturally fell into that. There were definitely days, there were definitely months where it was difficult. I think I defy anybody a to have you know, I think
a baby's a grenade in any relationship. But also I think if you work in this profession, you know, and you're suddenly you're coming home with casting tapes and you're going, you'll look at some casting tapes and you realize that half your friends you're looking you know, you're you're looking at audition tapes of our friends and you're thinking, God, you know, I can't put you forward for anything. So
there were those kind of tensions. But what no one really tells you about a long relationship is the ebb and flow, the highs and lows, and actually the lows can be pretty low, but you get through those. And so I think one of the things that we were very brutal with each other, very direct, and we also do a lot of marriage therapy, so when things got we'd always we'd dive in for bits, and so we
were quite well versed. Not on a kind of deeply organic we'd sit and stir into each other's eyes and you know, kind of you know, hold ourselves in a circle of gratitude. It was much more like, oh God, we've got to go tonight. Okay, let's go.
And it was actually often it wasn't a sex week, it wasn't a sexual It was.
Like you know, it was more like the enjoyment afterwards where we'd go, oh my god, wasn't it funny when we said that, and the drink in the pub afterwards, you know, it was it was those moments. But we've gone through a lot together. We've gone through a lot together before we had we've got to this place, you know. So I think I was in a place where I was very much like, Okay, I'm in it for the long rule with Jacob, you know, for both of us. I think we were both there.
June twenty eighteen. Can you tell me about that day, how it started and how it ended.
It was a very hot London kind of FuG My son was just finishing his final GCSS, which I don't know what the equipments in Australia, but it's you do them at sixteen. It's fine. A year of school, funny year of school. Jake wasn't feeling great, and this would often happen, you know, Jake just didn't feel great. It was it was the kind of ebb and flow, the tidal nature of MS. But at the time I just thought, oh god, it's man, flee, Okay, I'll do what I do. But it had been going on a few days. He'd
been working. He'd done about two days before he asked me to run some lines with him, and we were laughing so much because he couldn't get he couldn't get his lines out, and I knew he knew them, but it was more it was just very lots of spoonerisms and just how funny he couldn't just quite hold together the sentence. But we dismissed it as just tired and actually he'd overwork the lines. He knew the lines too well, that's what it was. He'd developed a slight rash again.
It was like, well, it's hot. So I went out to get steroids for him, which is what we did on those moments where he could feel he was on the edge of a potential MS relapse, which is where you really go down for a few weeks and you can just pull it back some steroids. So I went to Queen's Square, which is the hospital where Jacob would every month go for his MSS injection, which was a sort of a sort of new wand to drug he
was on. And when I came back, I found him clapsed on the bathroom floor and he was clapsed in a way that it was like I thought he'd just laying down in there because it was cool, you know, the tars were cool. But he was not making sense. He was just repetitive speech, and I knew immediately something was very wrong. Cut to you know, blue lit to a hospital, all the kind of craziness of that, and
I guess you know, there are those moments. I always remember a girlfriend saying to me, when's my future going to happen to me? And I always say, your future just happens. It's like it doesn't necessarily evolve, it just you don't notice it, and then suddenly it's bam. And it was like, in that moment, I knew I was in it, but also I was immediately my screenwriting head was on, so I was almost I mean, I describe it, but I was feeling like, oh my god, this is
this is a drama. You know, the kind of five year old only you loved, loved the drama, who loved the hit of the the hit of the punchline, the hit of the plot twist. It was there. It was definitely adrenalized, and I think it's a little bit it reminded me a little bit like when you get pregnant, and you know, it's like for me, I just had nine months of a hangover, but it's like you are suddenly in an altered state, and as much as you want to get back, you just can't. You going to
have to go forward and through it. It was not unlike that feeling of like whoa, Okay, I'm on a ride and whoa, I feel chemically weird, very adrenalized, but also I think you're hyper vigilant and you're just fighting for somebody. Because yeah, it was it was apparent in that moment Jade was very unwell. But then four or five hours later he'd had all the scans, he'd come through the other side, and he went from being repetitive
words speech like, oh my god, what happened? And we put it down to it was a seizure of some kind and they were just trying to work out what it was. But in that moment he was like he'd been swearing profusely at the at the paramedics that had arrived, an amazing posse of paramedics who came to help him, and he was just mortified. So that was the immediate reaction. But then over the next two weeks, Jacob physically, cognitively,
psychiatrically just unraveled. And that was when it became apparent that this was way beyond just potentially an infection from a tick or you know it was it was viral menagitis. It wasn't meningitis. It was another kind of infection. You might have gone, could it be could it be a you know, was it a relapse? But it became apparent sort of two weeks in that actually it was life threatening.
And I think that was when the world started to slow and I realized it was not just that I was in a drama, but the world had tipped upside down and it was like you were walking on the scening looking down on your life, going, this is surreal, totally surreal, and I think nobody prepares you for how physical trauma is.
You know, you talk about at one point hoping, you know, when they're trying to work out what it is, because it's not following that pattern that almost they expect, where it sort of keeps deteriorating. It's unclear what's going on, and you find yourself at one point they're looking for a tumor, and you find yourself hoping that it's a chair, And you have to say to yourself, where am I in the world where I'm hoping that my husband has cancer, because that's going to be good news.
You want things that you can control. You want something that has a kind of level of certainty. Obviously cancel. You know it's nobody wants that diagnosis, but you do want something to make sense. And you know, Jacob went from talking non stop, talking in Shakespearean language, you know, what is my duty? What is my cause? Why am I here to mute, catatonic staring into space to turning into a kind of border Empire gangster and like punching everybody.
You know, they had to go to guard on his door. I mean, I think as a family, both mine and Jacob, particularly Jacob's family, who you know, were all very close, watching their son, their brother, their uncle and Rabel was overwhelming. For my children, it was what the Hell's going on?
It just didn't make sense. And actually I think what was happening was there was just a key mont where it looked like Jake may not survive and physically his body just couldn't take this kind of what we now realize was something called brain on fire, which is a kind of encephalitis which they discovered in his bloodstream just as he was being put into a coma. They suspected it and they got confirmation. But at two weeks in, the decision was taken to put him in a medically induced coma.
And I think is that to let his brain recover. To let his.
Brain recover, he was to try and stop the seizuring. He was just continually seizuring. And also just your pneumonic function and you're swallowing, you're breathing, your heart rate, all of those things are under pressure. So it's a way to ventilate somebody, to just get them into a state where you can start, if needs be, taking over the
basic kind of organ control. So it's a combination of giving Jake physically some rest, his body some rest, I think, giving them some time to kind of try and control what was happening to him. And in that time you're sort of thrust in this very exclusive world. So we were in the medically intensive unit, and you know, in
that unit you're seeing the gamut of injury. You know, you're seeing clearly very old people who have suddenly got had a stroke or you know, a very young person who's clearly had a really horrific car accident and you know will never be the same. And so you're literally sort of caught between these places, going are you going to be there? Are you going to be there? You know what's going on. It's a very surreal, surreal, surreal experience,
you know, And I've watched those things on drama. I've just you know, today I've had to write a scene of a hospital scene, and you know, I'm doing exactly the thing we will do. Someone's rushing through doors, are opening, a nurse very quickly gives the diagnosis, and there's a kind of reactive moment. Well, it's the relentlessness of it must I mean, I remember that I kept on calling a girlfriend, going, I really think he's not going to make it today. I really think it's not going to happen.
And then I was thinking, God, I was doing this two days ago. This is on repeat. You know I would have edited this bit. So it's surreal experience. It's a really really surreal experience, you know, totally surreal.
And you talk about in your book about how in the movies, maybe not ones that you've written, but in the movies being in a coma, there's like this quiet room and there's a beautiful sheet up, and maybe there's some quiet music playing and a lot of families with tears rolling down their face, holding hands. And you say it's very different to that.
Well, I do think there is a kind of profound, intense concentration going on in those spaces. But what's extraordinary is people are in comas. So nurses are talking about their day. You know, you've got orders being taken for delivery. You know, you've got someone saying there's a uber here, So you've got all of that the life. Then you've got the kind of mechanics of looking after someone. You know,
there is so much equipment some on. So with Jacob, it was a ventilator that constantly had to be cleaned. You know, there are those things that make the suctions, the peaks, the wizzes, the part monitors that the cold blankets, the ice, the suddenly the temperature's got so much, Let's just surround him with an ice blanket. Let's cool him down, let's heat him up. Let's you know, his blood pressure has gone too high. Let's try and bring down. We need to get some more medication. We need to stop
the medication. We need consultants, doctor's therapists. Let's move his limbs. We've got to keep his limbs moving. We've got to move his body. We've got to pull something through his stomach because he can't go to the toilet.
This.
You know, there's so much going on, and there is this sort of surreal little waiting room. There was a little rating room that there was an electric door, and it was just for families, of which very very small group, you know, probably only two or three of you, because there were only five beds in the whole ward. And you spend most of it watching really terrible daytime TV. And everybody's waiting for a consultant to try and stop them. And if you can, you can jump in and get
in the room. I mean, one of the things that I feel incredibly grateful for was this was pre COVID, so we could be with Jacob. We could be with him, we were able to be not you know, Max was two people at a time, but we could be in the room with him. So but it's totally surreal. There was the very beautiful little thing which was somebody was leaving really beautifully drawn post it notes with beautifully drawn with little phrases little hey, how are you doing today?
And that none of the nurses knew who it was, but they were being stuck everywhere, and so that became a sort of detective hunt on the on the wall, people were like, can you see what's going on? But also no one tells you about the turnover of staff. So you know, in a drama you have one doctor, you have one nurse. They're becoming your best friends. You
have a rotation all the time. And in fact, I don't know whether it's the same in Australia, but in the UK doctor consultants not your chief but the kind of managerial consultant that you meant to see. They don't stay longer than three months. You know, Jacob was in a coma for seven months, so we had a turnover of three four consultants during that time, constantly going where's oh is doctor? Oh he's gone, No, No, he's gone
to another world. And it's actually m built. It's designed like that so you don't get too close, right, So even that the kind of methodology of the kind of amazingly bonded relationship you're going to have through the consultant. You're not. They're constantly being moved on.
And that sense of loss and having to start again.
Yeah, absolutely, and learn the language and share the language of who this person is and who they are and who you are in relation to them.
And you say this went on for seven months and it doesn't sound at all peaceful, and you know, you write about these are dramatic times. But more than this, they are lonely, and more they are boring. No one told me how boring loss is. No.
And it's quite funny because when I look at that period, I suddenly think, do you have Love Island?
Yes? Oh, yes?
I had a Love Island party. Jake was in a coma and I had a Love Island party where I invited all my friends around and we got the jazzled and I got all my daughter's friends did nails, and we had cocktails and we watched the final and then I had a fiftieth Birdy party for fifty people in my kitchen. I'm like, what planet was I on? And at the same time, I mean, it's sort of weird, you know, the kind of idea that I should be wearing black and sort of just sitting by Jacob's bird.
We just can't do that. But also, you've got teenagers, you know, I had my mother in law, I had my siblings. You have a community of people who need you need support, but they need support. So I sort of took over where Jacob did, which is I became the kind of master of fun. So I look back down and think, but I think a lot of it was I was trying to counteract the boredom, and the boredom was kind of the worst thing because there was
an inactivity to it. The truth is, I think when someone is in a coma, there is a level of inactivity or impotency you have as a family member, because that's the essential part of it. I mean, one of the things I found very interesting was towards the end of Jake's coma, when he was still very much submerged in it, a notice went up above his bed and said, do not overstimulate the patient no more than fifteen minutes conversation.
And I suddenly realized again, you know, I'd sort of given up on the idea that Jake could hear us, and I was reminded that Jake, as Jake was starting to come up a lot of what was going on around him was becoming incredibly stimulating. And so that was when I realized that, Okay, we've got to go back in again and connect, but for the vast period of it. And when you talk to Jacob now, he'll go, I don't remember any of it. I have no memory of any of it, whereas you know, of course, you know
I was speaking eulogies to it. You know, we were playing every we were sourcing his favorite bits of music. I think in many ways, you're doing that for yourself as much as anything else, because you're doing something to give form to the chaos of it and to have something to do every day, because most of the time that you have nothing to do in that context. So what you then have to do is really work hard to make the rest of your life work because you
need that energy and you need that. You need to find the joy. I suppose you need to find the joy because one month, two months, three months, four month, and you really need to start to find the joy. Running parallel with it.
You also need to find the money. Like the logistics of you know, work will understand and everyone around you will understand if you need to take a week off two weeks off, maybe three weeks off, but you were writing season two of a hit show. Yeah, and you know for the Baby say, you had a cast, you had everybody's schedules, Like, well, how did you handle that? How did you manage it? It's not like there's a team of writers. It's you.
Yeah, I mean, I mean that show is you.
Yeah.
I did have another writer on that second series who is really helpful. I also had a creative team that I know incredibly well, you know, and there's something weird, you know. I really my creative team. I work specifically with a producer, Jane Featherstone, who wants sister pictures and we've worked together forever. She's a really good friends as well, you know. So I need to be that open and I've always needed to do that, you know. I've got
add I can't stop talking. It's part of what I have to sort of monitor myself, and so people know that about me. So I didn't keep silent of that this experience. And what funny enough, one of the things that's come back a lot from people is, oh my god, you had so many people supporting you. And I realized it is because I went in go oh my God, you won't believe what happened today. And of course people's natural instinct when you tell them is to go what
we kid we do. So my case, I was incredibly lucky because the editorial meeting rooms and my production company was literally ten minutes walk from the hospital. I mean, how lucky could that be? You know, there were families on the wood that were having to travel into as a day just to get to that hospital. So loads of luck, loads of luck. Also incredible people who would kind of go, Okay, let's focus, let's get you down
on this script, let's talk through the script. And then they would see me go and go, okay, bring down the blinds. We're leaving you for an hour. We'll come back and now here's a bowl of harribos. Eat those when you get wake up. And so I would just like I was just held. I mean I have to say I don't. And actually writing for me was something that was essential. I kept going through my entire through
this entire experience, I didn't stop writing. So I write in the room, I wrote, I wrote it, Yeah, so interesting. I needed it. I needed that. I needed to process that. And I think, what's strange? I don't think it's until series three actually that the real experience of what I've gone through went into that final series, But certainly series two it was you know, and it's a big machine. You know, it's focused on the full crumb of you.
But you also have producers, you have brilliant directors, you have your editorial team. You then have the actors who you know incredibly well, who are the keepers of character, who can come to you and say it's gone a bit hoky, that bit you know, you know they you have so many people doing that, checks and balances and ticks and boxes and all of that that you know, it's a big machine around you that really holds you. And I've never been frightened of being at the center
of that. I've never been frightened. I've never had that. I've never had that. I always sort of known I can do it. It's weird, but I've always kind of thought, Okay, what do you need from me? I can always come up with the story.
After the break, Abby explains what happened when Jake woke up from his coma and didn't recognize her. Do you remember the day that he woke up or is it not that clear?
I remember this little bit. So I remember the eye opening and closing. I remember I had a great friend who's who knew a barber. And the other thing is the growing of the hair. You know, all those things that we keep secret from our partners, who knew how much hair grew in the oddest places. So Jake had to be trimmed and shaved, and you know, all of that was going And so I started to notice when the barber came in and he'd blow the hair, Jake would start to ruckle his nose and I realized that
he was coming up. And they kept on trying to bring him. It was a medically induced kerna, so they kept him trying to take off the medication. It's an anesthetic state, and every time they took it off, he would seizure again. So that was the issue. They weren't sure how they were going to bring him up. But finally they gave him the kind of wonder drug, which was a chemotherapy joke actually, and it was an experimental way of trying. They were trying it out and it worked,
and so the seiz ring just started to calm. So when Jake first started to wake, it was very much ebb and flow as they played around with the medication. But what I really remember was he woke to a point where his eyes were open, and the thing that was incredibly exciting was he started to track people, which was such a good sign that there was brain activity there because you know, he went in for brain scans there was a lot of vivid they called it vivid
areas of his brain. So we at that point we knew that there was going to be some kind of brain damage, but we didn't know to what degree. But the tracking was a really good sign. So it started with the tracking, and then the smile and then the thumbs up, all of those very sort of methodical things. But I think for me, the biggest moment was I came in and suddenly there was a speech and language woman there and he was now by this point sitting up and he had to track eotomy so he couldn't
speak at that point. You had to do various things so he could sort of do a growl. But they were starting to work on him eating and that was when, and that seemed to happen incredibly quickly. All this sort of very bad he was. You know, I remember this firs thing watching me to strawberry yogurt, and she said, would you like to speak now, Jake, And he was like, yeah,
I'd like to speak. And that was just like, oh my god, because not only was he didn't sound like him, he sounded like a sort of North London like wide boy, like his boys had gone very light, that very London. So he that was odd, you know. So there were all of these sort of little oddities. But as a family, I think we were sort of going, hey, Jake, it's us.
And of course he was very sweet. He was a little bit like a bear waking up, so he was He would smile at the children and I've got videos of in a Mabel singing to him at that point he would just smile. There was lots of nonverbal but as he started to speak a little bit, we started to get a few words, and you know, I'd say that went on for about sort of two three weeks of just sort of coming to and we were able to start to take him out in a wheelchair and
then they removed his trek. Heot to me, he came off the ventilator, and it was amazing. I think we were all like, oh my gosh, he's here. We could see he was there, but I also could see there was something profoundly different in him. The way he looked at me. I just thought, there's something not right here. So there was a sort of struck at you, a combination of at times completely blank, very quizzical, and often irritated.
And at first I thought it was a general thing, but then I started to notice the delight in which he greeted his parents, you know, with a smile, or I hate dad. Hey. He wouldn't use my name, he'd go Hi like that to me. He was just off with me. He wasn't warm, And I remember one day I went to kiss him on the lips and he was like that. And then there was a key moment where a friend came in. Jacob plays the ukulelean. He
plays the ukule. He brought his ukulelean. I went Jamie's coming to see you, and he went, great, did you wait outside? Keys? Could you wait out? And I felt something was very off. So there were just these little things where it's like something's not right here.
And when did you realize that not only was something not right, but it was really really wrong.
When it came to you, I'd filmed him one day we were all outside. We'd taken him we bought our dog. The joy of him seeing our dog. We have a really lovely dog called Styler. It was kind of a key character in the book. And he was so overjoyed to see the dog, and everyone was like, isn't this amazing? And I there's one of two things I'm filming him. And the first thing is that I'm talking to him
like he's a child. It mortifies me now. But the second thing is whenever I say, hey, Jake, isn't it great, he turns and looks at me and he looks straight at the camera and it's like and I'm like, something's not right. And then it really distilled on Valentine's Day. I went in on Valentine's Day and I bought him a really cheesy red cell phone heart and I tied
it to the end of his bed. And I talk about this, but actually the nurses had very sweetly bought everybody these really sort of cheap red roses, you know, the kind of thing you get on ahole day. And she was like, j J, give your wife, give your wife a rose. And he said, she's not my wife. And in that moment, I went, well, actually's kind of right, because you know I'm his girlfriend, I mean, his partner, not a wor you know, it's the constant game I'm playing.
Yeah, because you weren't married.
I weren't married. But very quickly I went, what do you mean? And I started to ask questions and you went. I said, do you know how? He says, I don't know who you are. I don't know how you're fooling everyone. That became the first and I was like, where is Abby? He says, you're not Abbi Morgan? And I said, well, where is Abbi Morgan? Then he went, and she's gone.
She's got a new life with someone else. So he did this thing called fabulation, which is where if you're not sure of your you know, it often comes out of you know, if you've gone through any kind of brain injury, car accident, you've got gaps in your memory, so you fabulate. Your brain tries to make sense, so it tells itself stories. So the story he told himself was that I had I had left him, and that he was now living in an apartment overlooking Hampstead Heath.
And it's quite funny because Jake and I both have a dream of having an apartment overlooking Hampstead Heath. So in this memory, he'd already gone there, he'd moved and he was loving it, and I had run off with someone else, and I was I had a new life for someone else, and so that, you know, at first, it was just incredulous. I mean, I think I remember I started to shake and I talk. It felt like the subway was underneath me. I remember driving in the
same to my sister. My sister called dog because I'm the same dogs. He doesn't know who I am. And you know that can't be true, and that's not true. It's really not true. And of course that's everyone's natural reaction because they feel huge pain for you. It's so bizarre. It's such a cliche, which is what I talk about. You know, it's such a bloody cliche. It's such a It felt like a bad, bad plot twist, but it's out of body again and that adrenaline picks in again,
and you're like, it's surreal. It's surreal.
But it's not even a cliche, because a cliche is like something that you've heard so many times.
I suppose it's a movie trope. It's a movie trope.
Well, the movie trope is that he wakes up and they don't remember anyone, no anything or who they are, right, So like amnesia. I am understand, but I've never heard of someone selectively forgetting Yeah, one person.
Yeah, And it's a very That's the next book because I think there's something really interesting. I mean, what became apparent was that, and it was really my son. My son was the kind of key to this, because you know, I was known as doctor Google and it's a gift I had passed on to my son because he said, Mom, if you had this thing called capgra delusion And I was like no, and he went, it's it's where there's
a severance between the visual and the emotional identity. So what happens is when we look at somebody, we not only go oh, yes, it's it's Mia Hi.
How are you?
We go oh yeah, I love that, I love her. I've got that I have a feeling towards you. With Capra that that becomes severed, and it's often focused on a particular relationship. It's often focused on someone you're close to.
It can be on a house, it can be on a dog, and in this case it's it's called the syndrome of the impostors or the delusion of doubles, and it's the belief that the person it's not that I did exist, it's not that they don't believe that I exist, it's that that person has been replaced by an impostor. So to Jacob, I was an impostor. Yeah, it's surreal, it's it was, I mean, so that was It was really Jesse and it was incredible to kind of get that.
And I spoke to the psychiatrists. He said, well, look, it's really unusual to get this out of en caphalitis. It's often found in dementia cases, you know, different kinds of dementia, but it's very unusual with someone of Jake's age to get it, and it often comes out of if you've had a brain injury as a result of a car crash. It would be very unusual in the result of en caphealitis. Subsequently, I have heard of it happening,
but it is very rare. So when I actually sort of approached the psychiatrist, said what the hell do we do about this? Because they said one of two things. They said, well, we work on a think called theory A theory B. So theory A is you're absolute right, Jake, one hundred percent. This is not Abby Morgan, your partner, not your wife, your partner. But theory B is we can never be one hundred percent sure of anything. So let's say ninety nine percent she's not Abby Morgan. But
let's just say this one percent. Can you take this a one percent possibility? And the idea is every day you slowly build, so you two percent five percent temper So the ideas you start to tip the balance of rationale. And the second thing is if it doesn't go within three and a half months, it's unlikely to go. It's here. So there was a sort of pressure so we all went, you know, in the initial it was like, okay, yep,
we will we'll do this thing. We'll do the theory O theory B. And it wasn't just me that was finding it very Difficultviously, my children found it incredibly upsetting. Jake's family found it. My family found it really difficult. You know. So there was a day where I'd photocopied we had to do a book. Hi, my name's Jacob. We made a book for him. They said, make a book. So you can start to read about his like, my name's Jacob, I love football, I have a son called Jesse,
a daughter called Mabel. My partner's name is Abby. And every time he saw that photo of me, he'd just sweep over. And then I bought him lots of photos of all the family to put around so you could look at all the family members. And I came in and I was like, where's my photo and they said, look, really sorry, we have to it right behind the Birdie doesn't want to look at it. So we had all of that going on, and also I just started to
get pissed off on board with it. So I just start of went, I mean, it's laughable some of the videos I've got. So I'm coming in and I'm going, hi, Jake, it's Abbey. Went no, it's not Abby, and I went, yes it is. No it's not.
Yes it is no, it's not. Okay, let's agree to differ. So we did all of that version. Oh my god, I mean, it went on with the bat and forth. But the other thing we would do would be I would go, my Abbe Morgan today.
And he went, you're definitely not Abbi Morgan, and so I loved that, even though he would be At first he was very resistant to me. He then started to go. I came one day and he said, you're working for
the state, aren't you? And I went yeah. He said, why else would you be so interested in my You know, we had various conversations which I talk around the children, but he said I think you must be working for the state and I went, yeah, I've come to work for the state and he said, I said, is that okay? He said yeah. I said I'm here for the state and said, so that's where you held help me and the kids, And I went, yeah, yeah, that's where I am. So that became why we settled.
Which did that feel like a betrayal though of yourself? Like did you want to just argue with him all the time, like to say, yeah, I work for the state? I mean, did you well?
One of two things I kept on thinking, this is such great material, this is so funny. The other thing was like this is I was generally found it funny. I was also there was two things that was funny and hysteria or running one. And the hysteria was to do with being really effing frightened because it's very it's deeply, deeply creepy when the person you love looks at you blankly,
it's deeply creepy. So also humiliating, very humiliating, And the biggest thing that nobody told me about this whole experience then, even though intellectually I'm like, why the hell would you feel like that? But emotionally, across the gamut of the illnesses that we experienced, but particularly this humiliation was a big part of it. And pride. And there's a great quote by Nora Efron which is her both her parents were writers, and her mother was the one that really
coined the phrase, you know everything's copy. But what Nora efernce ofd what I came to I was about my mother is that she says, when you slip on a banana skin, people laugh, But when you write about it and say I know I've slipped on a banana skin, you're the one that laughs. And I think there's a truth to that. Is that I had to go, I know what's happening here, guys, because I think there's nothing
more humiliating than being told to leave the room. Because you know, some very sweet ladies arrived to read the book that You've given him for Christmas to him, and he doesn't want you there because you're a stranger, but she's someone he's really got to know. I mean, that's where you start to feelucky, you said, lover, That's where you start to feel this weird jealousy. And it definitely, you know, I defy anyone not to have to manage
huge tensions. I mean, Jade's family were pretty bloody amazing because I was raging and I was very territorial over him. But the biggest thing I felt was I had to a way to stay in the room with him, because my worry was I was losing not only you know, Heedless his sense of identity for me, but I was losing the sense of my identity. And that was really frightening.
And somehow, if I didn't keep staying in the room and chipping away and almost the act of resistance in a way, do I was to go, yeah, you're right, I work for the state. You believe whatever you want. I know who I am. If that's going to shut you up, you believe in the state, I will come in and still be the lady from the state. And whilst I was there, I was able to go, well, there's someone from the state. Let's go out and have
tea as for someone from the state. Let me tell you all the things I know about you, Jay, So I would like one day, I said, quiz me. Ask me anything you want about yourself and I'll know the answer. And I got every single question right. So it was like, what was the name of my first dog? Where did I have an accident? What's my favorite Tottenham Hotspur player? Ever?
You know? And I knew every single answer, And instead of looking at me like, oh my gosh, I can't believe it it's you, he'd be like, how you doing that. It was always like, there's a trick. There's a trick here. I don't know how you're doing that. So yeah, it was peculiar. It was really really peculiar and very eroding and at times absolutely heartbreaking, really really, but there was also something that very key happened in that, which was it stopped being about me getting Jade back for me
and I just this is where I get emotional. He's such a great person. He's such a not just a great father, not just a great husband or a friend. He's such a great guy. And I needed him to get back in the world to get and that became bigger than me. That became bigger than whether he knew me or not. I just needed to make sure he got back out in the world again because I just and I call it the hum of love. He drives it at the wall. You know, we have loads of things,
you know, antisocial, social. I want to party, he doesn't. I don't want to party, he does. You know, I've got loads of that shit. We've got all the tensions. But irrespective of whether Jake's my part, I want to look across the room and go good. I was glad. I spent eighteen years with that guy. I used to know him, I loved him, I helped getting better. I helped getting better as one element, and he's out in
the world again. And so that became my motivator, and it was incredibly liberating when I let go of trying to get Jake back for myself. You know, the day Jake collapsed is the day that my relationship that I had with Jake ended, and the day Jake started to properly recover is when my new relationship started with him. But it's not the same relationship, and it comes right back to and I've not said this to actually anyone, but I don't really care, because i'd say to Jake
as well. But I can forgive what's happened, but I can never forget that it was me that he didn't remember. And I still circle where that is. And I you know, when you lean into side, it's like a trust exercise. If you fall back into the arms of someone, you have to know they can still hold you. And I don't know if I will ever truly be able to trust again that on a really profound level, does Jake really really truly know who I am now? And why
was it me? And it's that's something I'll circle forever, you know. So there was an ending somewhere in the middle of that, and there was a moment where I had to go, I have to let go of trying to get him back for me, and I have to start to try and get him back because he's worth restoring and helping getting back to the best he can be. So that that really became my focus, and I became a I hope, a much nicer person. Then I stopped growling at everybody. I mean, I was pretty bloody awful
at times. I was Growley and I was relentless. I was relent you know, you know when widows throw themselves on coffins. I understood that. I understood that I would sort of throw myself across Jake because the sort of you know when you have a baby and you almost want to eat him up, You always want to eat you know, the baby. I felt like that about Jacob. I wanted to consume him. That was how much I needed.
That was how much my connection was. And when I nice step back and went, you've got to let go of that connection. You've got to start to be part of the collective that's going to help get him better, then that became it became much more manageable as an experience. I think I haven't ready spoken about that before, but that's that.
Yeah, I told you this story was incredible and that there were plot twists and there are more for Mum and Maya subscribers to listen to right now.
It was such a bad plot twist, But you know, I think when when when crisis and disaster happens, it does kind of come in threes, you know, it does you know things do you sort of I don't know whether it's an energy thing I still think. Listen, I think I would always have got breast cancer. Unfortunately, I don't think it was Jake's fault, but I think a couple of things. I think I ignored it for that sort of nine months.
On this subscriber episode, we talk about another twist that nobody saw coming, and even Abby agreed was a little melodramatic, but you know, some might say overblown, except that it actually happened. And we also talk about where things are at now with Jacob and with their relationship. Just follow the links in our show notes to listen. Subscribing to Mumma Mea only costs less than six dollars a month
and you'll be supporting women's media. You can also find Abby's book, Not a Pity Memoir by the link in our show notes. Highly recommend that you do. It's absolutely brilliant and heartbreaking and funny and amazing and beautifully written because Abby is such a talented writer. And also watch The Split now season three. I think is available on iView, but wherever you watch it, it is truly brilliant. The assistant producer of No Filter is Emmeline Peterson. The executive
producer is one Eliza Ratliffe and I'm Maya Friedman. Thanks for having me in your ears. If you're looking for something else to listen to, like and follow all of our Muma Mea podcasts, which are currently bringing you hot pod Summer one hundred hours of Summer listens from spicy conversations to incredible stories fash beauty where the friends in your Ear is over Summer