“I thought it was maybe a fast food headache, but it felt a little stronger than that. I’m walking down the stairs and I’m thinking: ‘This is not normal. I don’t feel okay’.”
Schreiber said he became even more worried when he forgot his co-star’s name and then couldn’t remember any of his lines onstage.
He said: “It all vanishes. The play is gone from my head ... I know I’m in a play but I don’t know what play I’m in ...
“My doctor, who’s a friend, shows up and he had a terrified expression. My wife shows up, she looks terrified. I think: ‘Okay, I’ve had a stroke. This is it’.”
Schreiber underwent an MRI scan and was diagnosed with transient global amnesia (TGA), which can cause sudden bouts of memory loss and confusion.
“The guy said: ‘You’ll never have this again and it’ll be gone in 8 to 24 hours’, which I didn’t believe. You know, as a typical sort of Jewish hypochondriac person, I’m convinced that I had a stroke and they just didn’t find it.
[However] I go to sleep, I wake up, I remember the whole play. I never had another problem with it. I was embarrassed and thought everyone would think I was lying and taking a night off from the theatre”.
