Review by Michelle Palmer
Susannah Cahalan’s descent into madness begins in 2009, with two small bug bites and a mild obsession with bedbugs. A 24-year-old reporter living in New York City, Cahalan has a full but stressful life, with a loving boyfriend, close coworkers and family, and a challenging yet rewarding job. Despite outward appearances, however, something is terribly wrong; unbeknownst to her, Cahalan’s brain is starting down a winding, dangerous rabbit hole, filled with seizures, paranoia and psychotic rages.
Cahalan’s autobiography Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness reads like a movie script or an episode of House. For Cahalan, her journey into insanity is all too real, beginning with the innocuous bug bites and ending months later, after hospitalization, treatment and therapy. Cahalan’s last clear memory of that horrific time was of watching television with her boyfriend Stephen before she began to seize—not the quiet, glassy-eyed-type of seizure that she would also suffer, but a convulsing, foaming-at-the-mouth event like something out of a horror movie. When Cahalan next regains her memory, she is confined in a hospital bed, bearing a bracelet that reads “flight risk” and having lost an entire month of her life.
Despite becoming catatonic and being near death while doctors scramble to find a diagnosis, Cahalan’s story ends well—she is lucky to have caught the attention of neurologist Souhel Najjar, who realizes that what is wrong with Cahalan is not mental illness but a rare autoimmune disorder. Najjar, who himself had overcome obstacles to become head of his class at medical school, does the one thing no other doctor has done: he looks Cahalan in the eye and vows that he will find out what’s wrong with her, no matter what. After a brain biopsy confirms what Najjar had already suspected, Cahalan begins treatment for a rare disease known as anti-NMDA-receptor autoimmune encephalitis, and the even longer road back to recovery.
A trained reporter, Cahalan begins to piece together her missing month: using her own writing, her father’s journal, and personal accounts from friends, she works through the agonizing process of recounting that “month of madness.” Perhaps most difficult is watching the video tapes taken of her during her hospital stay: “That petrified person is as foreign to me as a stranger… without this electronic evidence I could never have imagined myself capable of such madness and misery,” Cahalan writes.
Brain on Fire is an incredible story; Cahalan’s honesty and unflinching approach to her illness make what could easily have been a book filled with self-pity and depression into a mission to find herself and to help others who go undiagnosed around the world. While her road back to health is not easy, Cahalan’s determination and spirit make Brain on Fire an unforgettable read.
Michelle Palmer of Murfreesboro is co-chair of Read To Succeed’s One Book Committee and is author of the book blog Turn of the Page (michellepalmersbooks.blogspot.com)
