One day in 2009, twenty-four-year-old Susannah Cahalan woke up
alone in a strange hospital room, strapped to her bed, under guard,
and unable to move or speak. A wristband marked her as a "flight
risk," and her medical records-chronicling a month-long hospital
stay of which she had no memory at all-showed hallucinations,
violence, and dangerous instability. Only weeks earlier, Susannah
had been on the threshold of a new, adult life: a healthy,
ambitious college grad a few months into her first serious
relationship and a promising career as a cub reporter at a major
New York newspaper. Who was the stranger who had taken over her
body? What was happening to her mind?
In this swift and breathtaking narrative, Susannah tells the
astonishing true story of her inexplicable descent into madness and
the brilliant, lifesaving diagnosis that nearly didn't happen. A
team of doctors would spend a month-and more than a million
dollars-trying desperately to pin down a medical explanation for
what had gone wrong. Meanwhile, as the days passed and her family,
boyfriend, and friends helplessly stood watch by her bed, she began
to move inexorably through psychosis into catatonia and,
ultimately, toward death. Yet even as this period nearly tore her
family apart, it offered an extraordinary testament to their faith
in Susannah and their refusal to let her go.
Then, at the last minute, celebrated neurologist Souhel Najjar
joined her team and, with the help of a lucky, ingenious test,
saved her life. He recognized the symptoms of a newly discovered
autoimmune disorder in which the body attacks the brain, a disease
now thought to be tied to both schizophrenia and autism, and
perhaps the root of "demonic possessions" throughout history.
Far more than simply a riveting read and a crackling medical
mystery, Brain on Fire is the powerful account of one
woman's struggle to recapture her identity and to rediscover
herself among the fragments left behind. Using all her considerable
journalistic skills, and building from hospital records and
surveillance video, interviews with family and friends, and
excerpts from the deeply moving journal her father kept during her
illness, Susannah pieces together the story of her "lost month" to
write an unforgettable memoir about memory and identity, faith and
love. It is an important, profoundly compelling tale of survival
and perseverance that is destined to become a classic.
