Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan

Susannah Cahalan was a successful reporter for the New York Post tabloid when she began to get sick in 2009. Her erratic behavior included these physical and mental symptoms:

• Paranoia ("people are staring at me, they're talking about me" thoughts)
• Hallucinations
• Mummy- or zombie-like actions (arms out in front of her while sleeping)
• Seizures with her eyes rolling back in her head, foaming at the mouth, stiffened body
• Blackouts
• Lip smacking
• Seeing things disproportionately
• Trance-like behavior
• Pulling her hair out
• Violence

One well-respected New York neurologist was certain that Cahalan was an alcoholic who just needed to stop drinking. Other theories looked at bipolar disease and schizophrenia.

When her condition became nearly catatonic, Cahalan was hospitalized on the epilepsy ward of the NYU Langone Medical Center. For several weeks, numerous specialists studied her, her test results, and her continually declining behavior. No one came up with any good answers.

Eventually a real-life Dr. House, Dr. Najjar took her case. Through a simple exercise during his examination of her, where he asked Cahalan to draw a clock face, he discovered what he thought was wrong. The neurologist told her family that her brain was on fire. Her body was attacking her brain.

After a brain biopsy that positively concluded that Cahalan was suffering from anti-NMDA-receptor autoimmune encephalitis. A series of drugs were started immediately with slow results that eventually returned Cahalan to her former self.

Though she has no memory of her month in the hospital when she was at her worst, Cahalan has recovered. She realizes that her body could attack her brain again, at least now she knows the symptoms and how to deal with it.

For a month, Cahalan was a patient in a New York hospital. And she doesn't remember any of it. To write this book, she had to use her reporting skills to piece together the lost time.

She used the following resources to put the pieces of her life back together:

• Her father kept a journal of what was happening to his daughter as well as how he felt.
• Her divorced parents left messages from doctors and nurses to each other at the hospital in a shared notebook.
• EEG tapes documented her for brief periods--sometimes seven minutes--which showed Cahalan exactly her demeanor and behavior while in the hospital room and bed.
• Extensive interviews with doctors, nurses, family, friends, and co-workers gave insight into her erratic behavior leading up to and during her hospital stay.

Cahalan has fully recovered from this illness but realizes it could recur at any time. She has written this book and is back to work at the New York Post. Her story is a quick read that isn't too scientific for us lay people but explains the medical information in a way that is approachable and understandable.