The woman who has lost 20 years from her memory and believes it is still the 1990s

• When Kay Delaney's children embrace her, she feels as if she is being hugged by strangers
• She cannot even recall their birth of her youngest son, and feels she can no longer relate to him at all

'My life is in tatters': Kay Delany looks at pictures of her children as she tries to piece together her memories after a freak fall made her forget 20 years

The last thing Kay Delaney remembers is tucking her six-year-old son and two-year-old daughter into bed for the night.
Two decades on, those children have grown up and graduated  from university – but Miss Delaney cannot recall any of it.
After falling at work and hitting her head, more than 20 years have been erased from her memory.
She is convinced she is still in her 30s and is stunned every time she sees the face of a 55-year-old staring back at her from the mirror.
To her, it is still 1990, when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister and mobile phones were the size of bricks.
The mother of three cannot even remember the birth of her younger son James, now 19.
Before the accident, Miss Delaney worked as a care home manager and was in line for promotion, but she now finds it hard to make a cup of tea because she repeatedly forgets to switch the kettle on.
Yet she has shocked her partner by waking up in the middle of the night and reciting an Edith Piaf song in perfect French, despite not speaking the language.
Miss Delaney was diagnosed with retrograde amnesia after she slipped on a wet floor while working at Dove Court Care Home in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire.
She was told she had nothing more than a minor concussion and sent home from hospital.
However, it soon became clear that she was having problems with both short-term and long-term memory.
Since then, she has struggled with simple tasks such as cooking and cleaning, and her partner of four years, Robert, 60, has given up work to look after her.
Miss Delaney, who admits that it feels as if she is being hugged by strangers when her children Sandy, 23, Kenny, 27, and James embrace her, said: ‘I remember tucking the children into bed when they were about six and two.

'I have been left without a sense of motherhood': The last thing Miss Delaney, 55, remembers is putting her young son and daughter to bed in the early Nineties as a 34-year-old

The woman she still thinks she is: Miss Delaney with her children Sandy and Kenny in 1990

'Then I woke up and it was 20 years later.

'I cannot even begin to describe the pain and sense of loss I feel every day of not being able to remember my children growing up, let alone not being able to remember my youngest child.
‘I have been left without a sense of motherhood as there is such a huge gap.