I’m so excited to share this book with everyone! I haven’t reviewed any non-fiction books here in a while and this is a good one.
I’m sharing today Brain On Fire by Susannah Cahalan, the medical memoir about her search for a diagnosis for her extremely troubling systems. Here’s the synopsis from its Goodreads page:
A gripping memoir and medical suspense story about a young New York Post reporter’s struggle with a rare and terrifying disease, opening a new window into the fascinating world of brain science.
One day, Susannah Cahalan woke up in a strange hospital room, strapped to her bed, under guard, and unable to move or speak. Her medical records—from a month-long hospital stay of which she had no memory—showed psychosis, violence, and dangerous instability. Yet, only weeks earlier she had been a healthy, ambitious twenty-four year old, six months into her first serious relationship and a sparkling career as a cub reporter.
Susannah’s astonishing memoir chronicles the swift path of her illness and the lucky, last-minute intervention led by one of the few doctors capable of saving her life. As weeks ticked by and Susannah moved inexplicably from violence to catatonia, $1 million worth of blood tests and brain scans revealed nothing. The exhausted doctors were ready to commit her to the psychiatric ward, in effect condemning her to a lifetime of institutions, or death, until Dr. Souhel Najjar—nicknamed Dr. House—joined her team. He asked Susannah to draw one simple sketch, which became key to diagnosing her with a newly discovered autoimmune disease in which her body was attacking her brain, an illness now thought to be the cause of “demonic possessions” throughout history.
This book reinforced for me that memoirs and autobiographies are my favorite genres of books. I think this amounts to me being nosy more than anything, so an interesting person going so in-depth into their story is really fascinating to me. Her story is definitely fascinating. She doesn’t hold anything back from this book. The anecdotes she includes of the troubling and progressively frightening symptoms of her mystery illness couldn’t have been easy to write, I would use “brave” as one of the first words to describe her. She blends perfectly into her narrative details of the biology of the human body that make her story easy to understand and also a little bit of a lesson. I didn’t find myself wanting anything from this book or wishing that she had done anything different. She wrapped up her story with where she is now and she has truly come a long way.
Part of the book I want to discuss could be considered a little spoiler as she doesn’t discuss it until the end of the book but it is mentioned in the Goodreads synopsis, so here’s a fair warning! In one of the last few chapters she goes into detail about how much her disease resembled the classic interpretation of exorcism. She wonders if many children or adults who failed an attempt to exorcise the demons out of them and then left to die would’ve actually been saved by what saved her: a brain biopsy by a caring doctor. This was one of the most compelling parts of the book and her story, what a challenge to many who often point to any strange behavior as a sign of something supernatural. She calls for greater interest and research into the connections between emotional and behavioral symptoms to neurological disease. Her symptoms included multiple personality disorder and schizophrenia, yet she is not a schizophrenic. How many others have received these damaging labels and don’t heal under antipsychotics when what they really need is more neurological testing to find the right answer?
