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Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness
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Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness
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Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness
Audiobook7 hours

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness

Written by Susannah Cahalan

Narrated by Heather Henderson

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

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.
 
 With sharp reporting drawn from hospital records, scientific research, and interviews with doctors and family, Brain on Fire is a crackling mystery and an unflinching, gripping personal story that marks the debut of an extraordinary writer.

Editor's Note

Frightening & engrossing…

A truly shocking memoir that follows Cahalan through a series of seemingly inconsequential events that suddenly make her violent and psychotic. Her scattered-but-thorough account of her month of madness is frightening and engrossing.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 13, 2012
ISBN9781611749793
Author

Susannah Cahalan

Susannah Cahalan is an award-winning #1 New York Times bestselling author, journalist, and public speaker. Her 2012 memoir, Brain on Fire has sold over a million copies and was made into a Netflix original movie. Her second book, The Great Pretender was shortlisted for the 2020 Royal Society’s Science Book Prize. She has written for The New York Times, New York Post, Elle, The New Scientist, and BBC’s Focus, as well as academic journals The Lancet and Biological Psychiatry. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and twin toddlers.

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Reviews for Brain on Fire

Rating: 4.003972787741203 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is the memoir of an illness. Susannah Cahalan sank into a severe psychotic state, most of which entirely escapes her memory. With the help of the memories of her family, friends, coworkers, and medical team, she reconstructs the suspenseful unfolding drama of finding a diagnosis and then a treatment. Her story is a page-turner as we watch the entire sequence of events unfold, one test at a time, and the two-steps-forward, one-step-back progress of her recovery.Cahalan fell victim to a little-known brain disease with the tongue-tangling name of anti-NMDA-receptor autoimmune encephalitis. Her first doctor diagnosed her with alcohol withdrawal and accused her parents of denial when they refused to accept the diagnosis. Fortunately, her next neurologist was certain that alcohol was not involved in her illness before he ran out of ideas and passed her on to yet another neurologist who became the hero of the tale.Cahalan's story would make a whopping good suspense film, a true-to-life Dr. House search-for-the-truth, where time is of the essence. Her doctors knew that delay could mean death or a lifetime of profound disability.Her gratitude to those who fought so long and hard to save her life and restore her quality of life has given her new focus. In addition to her book, which contains enough scientific information to be of use to physicians, she has established a foundation to underwrite the cost of the required high-level care (the kind of care she received) for those diagnosed. She is determined to make a difference for others who have been or may be condemned to death or locked away in a mental hospital as a result of a misdiagnosis.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Fascinating study of a young woman fallling rapidly from apparent good health to a deeply psychotic state, ultimately revealed to be an autoimmune response attacking her brain. Cahalan tells her own story billiantly, using her regained investigative reporting skills, but perhaps the most fascinating portion, to me, was kind of an aside in the main book.

    Cahalan's behavior at the height of her illness bears a remarkable likeness to "demonic possession" reports from historical documents. One cannot help but wonder if this insidious condition was present then.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I found this book fascinating to read. The thought of losing memories, days and oneself seems to me like a nightmare scenario. The author balances her experiences with simple medical terminology, cites doctors notes and watches hospital footage of herself in an attempt to chronologically regain her lost month and the interactions she had with family, friends and work colleagues. This is a brilliant memoir of a young woman who overcame the odds and is trying to help other's with the same affliction seek out proper diagnosis and treatment. Well worth a read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Interesting subject matter is undercut by flat prose. I felt bad for Cahalan, but my sympathies lie more with the people she mentions near the end of the book who may not have access to the same expensive medical procedures or quality doctors possessing the knowledge to differentiate between an autoimmune disease and a mental health issue.Also, I was less interested in a case study of how it feels to go insane than all the consequences that her situation revealed. Near the end of the book, the author only touches briefly on the fascinating issues of our perception of reality, the malleability of memory, and thin line between mental health issues and physical brain ailments.(Read for a book club.)
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The medical mystery is fascinating, and the details of medicine and psychiatry are very much in my wheelhouse. Calahan does an impressive job of recounting an experience she largely does not remember and weaving in the technical details of her condition. I kind of lost interest in the last fifty pages or so, which detail her recovery and return to work.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I’ve been reading at a faster clip now that I’m actually done with the Cannonball. Or at least, it feels like it. Maybe it’s because the pressure is off. This latest book comes courtesy of that old traveler’s standby, Hudson News. Even though I have about 20 unread books on my Kindle – including that bastard book five of A Song of Ice and Fire – I always wander into this newsstand/bookstore when I’m at the airport. This book caught my eye and I’m really glad it did.

    Ms. Cahalan was a reporter at the New York Post when she started acting strangely. She was paranoid, manic, and even started to have seizures. One doctor thought she was an alcoholic; she eventually was admitted to an epilepsy ward at NYU, where she underwent tests as her condition deteriorated. Was she having a nervous breakdown? Was she bi-polar? Was she sick with something that was physically altering her brain?

    It is not a spoiler to say that doctors eventually figured out what was going on. But the journey to get there is fascinating, especially because Ms. Cahalan serves as both the subject as well as the author, but not in the traditional memoir way. Because she has very few memories of that time, she treats herself as the subject of a story. She pursues answers and creates a narrative the way she would a feature story; in fact the book stems from a feature she wrote about herself once she returned to her position at the Post.

    The book is well-written, interesting, and compelling. The story it tells is terrifying in some respects, but hopeful in others.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A young journalist feels like she is losing her mind and no one can tell her what's wrong. This true story was written by the woman who experienced the disturbing events. But she remembers little of that time and used her investigative skills to research her parents' journals, doctors' notes, even video surveillance from the hospital, to try to understand what happened to her during that time.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Very interesting.A young girl who works for the New York Post starts having very strange symptoms. She has seizures and nausea with vomiting and hallucinations. The doctors at first think that it's a classic sign of alcohol deprivation and tell her to stop partying. But with the aid of her parents she gets into a hospital where they diagnose her with everything from depression to schizophrenia and autism. A month later and countless tests both mental and physical finally help her and the doctors to distinguish the problem. But can poor Susannah Cahalan survive her month of madness?Wow what a journey! What does poor girl had to go through is completely astonishing. After all that she not only survived but got better. Most other people would not have survived her ordeal.This book was written as a memoir. Whether well-thought-out or not it is very well put together in a way that the reader can understand the madness that Susannah descends into. This book is definitely a wild ride. The end is both tragic and happy. It is interesting for me to look into the human nature of people and how they react to certain situations regarding their friends and acquaintances. Great book! I highly recommend it!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was an amazing book. The writing is really good and the research is thorough.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A MOST fascinating read. Everyone is any social/mental service field should read this and be aware of its possibility. A life saved by the luck of timing, Susannah begins a downward spiral into what is initially assumed to be a form of psychosis, and rightfully so, before a Godsend of a doctor takes on her case and, thankfully, recently read a paper describing her symptoms and a better diagnostic method. Anti-NMDA-receptor autoimmune encephalitis has just recently been diagnosed (2007) and successfully treated and in such, many degrees have also been added to the list of related brain inflammations. Through her own jagged memory and that of those who witnessed her illness, she recounts a near play-by-play journey into an abyss she barely saw the happy end to. Soon to be made into a movie, read it detailed, first hand, from this amazing woman and her supporting cast of family, loyal beau and steadfast friends.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This was fucking fascinating. And filled me with a bit of dread, in that sense of 'suddenly everything could go terribly wrong and you don't necessarily notice anything is wrong' sort of way.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Mental illness can be a difficult thing to deal with and even more difficult when it's actually a physical ailment masquerading. This is an impressive tail pieced together through journals, eye witness accounts and spotty memories. Very interesting.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    When you read this book it will change the way you look at Mental Illness. After I read Brain on Fire I questioned what I knew about MI, which is a lot, because I was raised by a parent diagnosed Bipolar and another family member is diagnosed with Schizophrenia. But what do any of us really know about the complexities of the brain and the problems that can cause it to malfunction? Susannah Cahalan has an insight most of us will never have, and she is able to tell us what she knows as only a journalist is able to.In her early twenties her brain caused her body to rebel in ways that are hard to believe. She spent a month in the hospital while her family and the doctors tried to make sense of what was happening to her while everyday she got sicker. Then one doctor put the clues together and she started the long journey towards health. I highly recommend this former Bestseller to readers who are dealing with MI in their families, readers who love medical mysteries, and people in the medical profession. 5 stars
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The author was stricken with a mysterious auto-immune illness that attacked her brain. Though she has very little recollection of the time that she was severely ill, she has used her skills as a journalist to recreate this period of her life. Reading about her descent into an illness that a lot of people thought was a mental disorder is both horrible and fascinating. It's like when you see an accident and cannot look away. Readers can't help but think "what if this happened to me". Reading about how a diagnosis and cure were eventually found was equally fascinating, however once she was back to normal the rest of the book describing the insights she gained and her life since then fell a bit flat for me. Our book club had a reasonably good discussion on this. I was afraid there might not be much to talk about beyond "what would you do in this kind of situation" and the messed up state of our health care system, but we found enough to discuss for an hour or so.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A highly competent newspaper reporter wakes up one morning strapped to a hospital. Susannah tries to talk but no one can hear her. They get in contact with her mother and she comes to Susannah's aid. Susannah had a seizure so they send to the epilepsy ward. She has all kinds of medical testing and sees a psychiatrist who informs them that she is going through withdrawal due to alcoholism. Since they are unable to find another answer, they send them home. Within the week, she has another seizure and is foaming at the mouth, They return to the hospital and further testing done. The results are still normal. The parents demand another diagnosis before they go home again. They get in touch with another doctor out of the city and he is stunned also. He does further testing with Susannah and he locates the diagnosis. The diagnosis is SO rare it is overlooked in many cases.I enjoyed this book very much. It is scary to read but has a happy ending. The book also reminds us what parents and children go through just to LIVE.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I, for the most part, really loved this book. I loved it not only because I love psychological/medical "mystery" books, but also because Susannah does such a fantastic job of portraying her experiences.

    Although I would not necessarily recommend this book to everyone, I think if health and matters of the brain/well-being is something that you're interested in then this is a wonderful read!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A riveting true-story about how one woman went from a budding career as a newspaper reporter to suddenly suffering from seizures, psychosis, and near-catatonia. Only one doctor's diagnosis of a rare autoimmune disorder saved Susannah from a future in the psychiatric ward, misdiagnosed as schizophrenic, psychotic, and catatonic. This is her story of survival and how it opened the eyes of the medical community and enabled them to more competently identify this disease in others. A very inspiring and heartbreaking story.I am a nurse and the information presented in this book is very intriguing and prompts me to consider if this may be an illness suffered by any of my own patients. I will definitely recommend this book to friends and colleagues.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Susannah Cahalan's problems started with an exaggerated worry about bedbugs in her apartment, a tingling in her arm, an embarrassingly bad day at the newspaper office where she worked, and a touch of what seemed like it might have been the flu. Before long, she was experiencing terrible insomnia, erratic behavior, seizures, and psychosis. And then things really got bad. Ultimately, she spent a month in the hospital growing increasingly closer to a catatonic state before her doctors were finally able to recognize her rare, poorly understood, tragically under-diagnosed disease and get her onto the road to recovery.Cahalan writes well about her experiences of what it was like coming down with this illness, living through it, and trying to understand who she was when she was sick and who she'd become afterward. She also does a frankly impressive job of using her journalistic skills to to piece together the story of that month of hospitalization, as she personally remembered almost nothing of it, and what little she did remember was mostly hallucinatory. The result is thoughtful, engaging, clear, and fascinating, both medically and personally. Of course, it's also terrifying. I probably really didn't need another reason to worry that something horrifying is happening to my body or brain every time I feel a tingle or suffer a random memory lapse. Still, I can't remotely regret reading it because of that.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Excellent story skilfully told!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This memoir is an enjoyable argument for looking at mental illness as part of the physical whole of the body. The link between mental illness, including schizophrenia and depression, and inflammation is getting stronger and stronger, but the difficulties in diagnosing inflammation in the first place and addressing the causes of this inflammation in the second place make it challenging for clinicians to put the physical and the mental together. The other challenge comes from the system being set up to keep mind and body entirely separate. Mental health professionals and medical professionals outside of the mental health field are both unlikely to look at biological causes of patient's mental symptoms. Just the fact that there's a division between mental health professionals and other medical professionals is both evidence of a continued erroneous assumption of Cartesian dualism and the reason that the chasm between mind and body is so difficult to bridge. Cahalan herself describes a situation in which she was threatened by the medical staff with being moved from the neurology wing to a psychiatric hospital if she didn't straighten up. Only within a paradigm that believes that the mentally ill have control over their mental symptoms would a psychiatric hospital be considered punishment. As long as we continue to look at mental symptoms as acting out or the fault of the patient, we're not going to be able to see the whole picture and effectively help people with mental illness in the way that we attempt to help those with illnesses we view as purely physical. Because many (perhaps most) physical complaints have a mental health component, it would also be reasonable to expect that by keeping a clinician from taking into account the complete picture, ignoring mental symptoms could also decrease the effectiveness of treatments for physical ailments. I'm not holding my breath for things to change, though, at least not within my lifetime. (Although I suppose if I held my breath long enough, that would almost guarantee there wouldn't be a change during my lifetime.)
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A very interesting memoir about a sudden disease that lead to 'madness' and near death in a young journalist. A little uneven at times, but heartfelt and sincere. The language is vivid, never boring, and I finished it during an airplane trip right after buying it at the airport. Good read!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    "Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness" by Ms. Susannah Cahalan, a journalist at the New York Post, is the story of her many mistaken diagnoses and finally successful healing and recovery. The book was a quick and engrossing read. It was well-written and well-researched. Ms. Cahalan's curiosity and determination as a reporter served her well during the writing of this book about her illness. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in mysterious medical diagnoses, psychiatric disorders, mistaken diagnoses, autoimmune disorders, and rehabilitation from serious illness. The high quality of the writing and compelling story-telling make it an engaging and quick read. Highly recommended.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book was both terrifying and awe-inspiring. Ms. Cahalan brought home the magnitude of her experience and the possibility that her disease could strike any of us. I was profoundly moved by the way her family and friends pulled together to support her and by the drive they showed to find a cure. Their commitment to seeing her through her ordeal was phenomenal. But the refusal of her own spirit to incinerate in the fire in her brain was what kept me reading, what prevented the events of her narrative from becoming desperate and oppressive. Cahalan's story left me amazed.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A young woman winds herself suddenly plagues by bizarre and uncontrollable behavior, and soon suffers from fullblown psychosis. What begins as a diseas diagnosed as a mental illness, she soon becomes catatonic. Her family never gives up hope and pushes for answers, resulting in a new diagnosis: her immune system is attacking her brain. Great for those interested in medical and psychological memoirs.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    great,scary story. i wonder how many people are suffering from this. she's so lucky to have been diagnosed and cured. great reader.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Both utterly compelling, and lacking at the same time. I couldn't put down Susannah Cahalan's look into her own illness and finished it in an afternoon, but at the same time, I found myself skimming a lot.

    With PANDAS causing OCD through autoimmune response to infection and Susannah's story of mental illness from autoimmune overreaction, it makes me hope that scientists and doctors take a good serious look into the currently unfounded theories that link the rise in allergies and other autoimmune disorders with the increase in Autism. Even if autoimmune illness only plays a factor in a percentage of the cases, it's worth the time to investigate.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    It's a great story, and I'll bet the short version she wrote was better. It certainly reminded me of "House," the TV series about a cranky doctor who solves medical mystery cases in an hour. But I'm not sure that trying to get a whole book out of this story panned out. I seem to be in the minority here; I thought the story dragged until she got the diagnosis. It was one episode after another of "and then I did this, and then I did that." Then after the diagnosis it was interesting for a bit, before slowing down again. I didn't think it was great writing, given that she is a journalist. I kept picking it up and putting it down. The reason I picked it up was that many students in an AP Psych course at my high school had read portions of it in class (maybe they read the article it is based on). Well, in the end I skimmed the last quarter of the book. If anyone is interested in stories of neurological mysteries, I recommend Oliver Sack's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Now that was fascinating.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    another required reading book for a workshop
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Wow! This memoir reads like a real-life episode of House. At 24, reporter Susannah Cahalan suffered a number of neurological and physical symptoms that teams of doctors were unable to diagnose. It seemed she would be destined to spend her life in a psychiatric facility, if she even survived. This is the story of her illness. It is told with honesty...and it's a scary story. One that makes me appreciate how much those who are ill need people to champion them and believe in them. Such a good story, told so well.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I received a copy to facilitate my review. The Opinions expressed here are my own. Imagine you are a successful reporter in New York City and that you are only 24 when suddenly you know something is wrong. You are having several physical issues and mental issues and no one seems to be able to correctly tell you what is happening. This is what happened to Susannah Cahalan. She had an inflammation of her brain, yet was misdiagnosed many times. People start to believe with her symptoms that she has an alcohol problem, or is schizophrenic. Her dad is the one person who stands behind her and believes there is something physically, not mentally wrong with her. She finally finds a doctor who does one simple test and proves her condition is physical. It is confirmed by another doctor and true treatment begins. It is scary to find out there are so many auto-immune diseases out there that go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed. How many people are institutionalized because of this type of situation? Susannah was one of the lucky ones because she had such a strong support system and they were determined to find the cause. This was both a scary and uplifting book as we find hope in doctors like hers.