![]() Recommended for: Memoir fans and anyone who is interested in how your brain and body can fail you. It’s raw, honest, heartbreaking, and uplifting all at the same time and I’m better off for knowing her story. Whether you know the cause or not, I highly recommend this book. She begins to pull wires off of her head and notices an orange band on her wrist. A purple lady tries to soothe Susannah, but Susannah becomes angry and paranoid. She wakes up to find that she's restrained. The book begins with Susannah relating a hallucination from the hospital. ![]() That’s because I went into this book not knowing the details and think it was a more powerful page-turner because of it. In not knowing, I went down the rabbit hole with her, complete with the confusion and awareness (or lack thereof) that came along with it. While I’ll never truly be able to grasp the horrors that she went through, I was able to catch a glimpse of it. Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness Summary. Now that I’ve warned against that particular warning, you have probably figured out that I haven’t shared what her eventual diagnosis was or how she got sick in the first place. I found her approach to the terminology and explanations to be casually and seamless integrated into the story and would hate for someone to skip this book based on a fear of it being too “academic” in its descriptions. In a book about a disorder affecting the brain, medical jargon is an absolute must for a reader to fully understand what happened to Cahalan. I completely disagree with this assertion. That said, I came across a few that said the book’s focus on the medical side of things was overwhelming. When I was browsing reviews for Brain on Fire, I came across mostly positive ones. Carota by Joan Miró stayed with Cahalan throughout her ordeal. It’s a stunning story but it’s also a painful one, filled with terrible experiences she asserts she wouldn’t wish on her worst enemy. She also chronicles her recovery, detailing awkward social exchanges, going back to work, and how the experience changed her life in ways she is still realizing. She leaves no stone unturned, discussing how the experience changed her relationships with her previously distant father and new boyfriend and its impact on her job. Whether it’s her writing style or the story itself, I eagerly raced through the pages with awe and wonder at what she went through and where she ended up. It’s also clear that Cahalan is, by trade, a writer. It's a must-read! Click To TweetĪs brutal as this book is (which I happened to start on March 16, the day she entered the hospital in 2009), the fact that she was able to write it is an indication that it has a happy ending. #BrainonFire is the fascinating story of one woman's lost month of madness. The result is an incredible story that is impossible to put down. From paranoia, seizures, hospitalization, hallucinations, and short-term memory loss to the misdiagnoses and road to recovery, she holds nothing back. ![]() Because she has no memory of her experience, she has reconstructed in her memoir her lost month by relying on videotapes, journals, and interviews with friends, family, and doctors. “No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.” Aristotleīrain on Fire: My Month of Madness is the fascinating story of Cahalan’s journey to hell and back. ![]()
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