'Why me?" That's a question Pat Nugent wrestles with every day. Another is: how could a life disappear just like that? It is 13 years since Nugent's world collapsed. Thirteen years since he woke up from a month-long coma to find himself surrounded by strangers who said they were his wife, his children and his family.
When he was discharged from hospital, he had to go home with these "strangers". He was as much a stranger to them as they were to him.
It would be three years before he remembered any of his earlier life. But even now, he cannot remember the man he was. He has a sketch of his earlier self, pieced together from descriptions by those who were closest to him, but it's a sketch of someone else, someone other people knew. In the end, he had to create a new persona.
One morning in 1988, Nugent skidded on black ice on his way to work and wrapped his car around a tree.
He damaged his right leg and arm in the accident, affecting his ability to write - "I can't even read my own writing now," he says. But worse, he suffered traumatic brain injury.
In the years that followed, he would lose his wife, family, career and friends. He can no longer work, his memory fails him, he has trouble with numbers, he sometimes loses his balance. His reactions and speech are slow, he rambles sometimes, he tires easily.
He developed epilepsy as a result of the injury and suffered frequent seizures, now under control. But his sense of space is different and he can no longer drive, as he is unable steer a car.
"There I was, on the top of the world," he says, shaking his head in disbelief. "And I had to go and have a crash. My life was so perfect. When I came out of the coma, I didn't recognise anyone."
At the time, Nugent was only 36. He was a businessman who had been happily married for 14 years, with three children aged from three to 13.
He had joined the Industrial Development Authority in the early 1980s and was soon heading its Far East department, first in Japan, then Hong Kong. He attracted £36 million of inward investment, creating 3,000 jobs in the Republic.
After five years in Hong Kong, he brought his young family home and started a manufacturing plant in Longford, making latex gloves and employing 16 staff.
The family had been back only five months when the accident happened.
They went through a terrible time when he was in the coma, and must have been overjoyed when he came out of it.
But when he left hospital, Nugent found it difficult to cope. "Life was dreary. I couldn't drive, I couldn't drink - I still can't drink. And I got so frustrated. The more my memory came back, the more frustrated I became. It was very hard, very hard for everyone.
"My personality has changed. It's hard to say what my personality was before this, but I manufactured a whole new personality for myself, by adopting practices which are common to everybody else, which are sensible to everybody else, but don't make sense to me. My friends have all gone, because of my demise. They didn't know how to handle me any more."
Life at home was strained, but they muddled through. Eventually it became too much and, six years after his accident, Nugent's wife asked him to leave. He now lives with his elderly mother.
Dr Deirdre McMackin, senior clinical neuropsychologist at Beaumont Hospital in Dublin, who treated Nugent, says his experience is sadly common among those with brain injury.
"Fifty per cent of marriages go to the wall," she says. "Literally, you're living with a stranger. Often, what spouses will describe is that they are left on their own in a relationship.
"They have another child to care for, but they have no emotional support, so they are effectively being both parent and spouse to their partner."
About 13,000 people suffer brain injuries each year, and the vast majority of these are young men, aged 18 to 36. The charity Brain Research says about 1,200 of them can be expected to die of their injuries.
Those who survive may be married only a few years and be the breadwinners of young families. Their spouses have their lives ahead of them, so the pressures on them are different to those on, say, someone in their 60s whose partner of 30 years has had a stroke.
McMackin says studies show that the spouses of people with spinal-cord injuries record higher rates of marital satisfaction, "because they're living with the same person, except they're physically damaged. With head injury, you're often living with the same body, but they're mentally different. There isn't always a personality change, but there are common personality changes.
"The problem is, there aren't any services for people like that, really, especially longer term. We do know it doesn't get any better after two years.
"There is some very good work going on here, but in terms of, say, Pat, now he doesn't have anything to do, there's no particular service for him to fulfil his needs."
Nugent is rebuilding his life slowly. He meets with his children once a week and is taking a business course in Tullamore. He has made new friends in Brain Research's Terracotta Ramblers and taken part in some of their annual fund-raising hikes to far-flung corners of the world, such as Utah, Kilimanjaro, the Himalayas, Thailand and Peru. He writes for their newsletter and has had his poetry published.
"The future is bleak," he says. "Each and every day, I feel like I'm dragging myself back by my fingernails to where I was. The anger was there for a long time, but it's faded now, it's gone. I see the neurologist once a year. The doctor said I had to take control of my life. That's all I can do."
Pat Nugent was interviewed in the company of Mary Quinn, chief executive of Brain Research (01-8379087), an organisation that raises money for research into a range of neurological conditions, including Alzheimer's, epilepsy, motor neurone disease and schizophrenia