Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness in Science and Inquiry

Nov 26, 2017 Petra lives on a little Caribbean island rated it liked it

Diagnosed schizophrenic. Psychotic or the victim of the greed of drug companies?

The last book I read was Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals That Brought Me Home, an experience of brain aneurysm and recovery. It was very so-so but the author's appealing personality added much to the book. I hoped that Brain on Fire, in the same genre, would be better. The author's personality didn't shine through, but this might have been a fact that she lost herself with her illness.

The illness, a rare, auto-i Diagnosed schizophrenic. Psychotic or the victim of the greed of drug companies?

The last book I read was Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals That Brought Me Home, an experience of brain aneurysm and recovery. It was very so-so but the author's appealing personality added much to the book. I hoped that Brain on Fire, in the same genre, would be better. The author's personality didn't shine through, but this might have been a fact that she lost herself with her illness.

The illness, a rare, auto-immune disease of the brain seems to mimic schizophrenia and you could see this when it was full-blown. However, what was not clarified was when the author was nuts and when she was seriously ill. Before her illness it becomes apparent th at she might go to work clean and neat, but her apartment is filthy and she is a hoarder. Her first symptom was that of seeing a bed bug bite on her arm (given the state of her apartment you could see that her sheets probably hadn't been washed in months) but no one else could see the bed bug bite.

I did wonder about her boyfriend, why he had enabled her to live like a mentally-ill person before she actually was. Why hadn't he cleaned the place if she was incapable of it? Or got in a cleaner, we are talking very wealthy people here.

The author makes an excellent point in that many people living with 'schizophrenia' might actually have the same, easily curable brain disease, but the process of diagnosis was very expensive, although now one would hope that there are protocols to follow to rule it out before labelling someone psychotic-for-life. The treatment was beyond most people's means, and most insurance companies would have bailed out long before $20,000 a bag drips were given.

This is where I take issue with the expense. I was recently stuck in Florida unable to get home because of Irma and the damage to airports etc. There is a medication I need, I get it on prescription and pay $6 per pack. (I got some yesterday on the island, price-gouging, now $12). I ran out while I was in the US. Normally US pharmacists will not fulfil a non-US prescription and I would have to see a doctor to get a new one but emergency regulations let me have a month's prescription. $250. The pharmaceutical companies had Bush's permission to charge whatever
they pleased. So on my island they pharmacy's were making a profit selling the drugs at $6, and in the US the insurance companies were being asked to pay out $250 for the exact same medication in the exact same packaging.

So maybe people were being diagnosed as schizophrenics rather than having a brain inflammation because of the greed of the drug companies and the desire of insurance companies to put profits before health? Is this not a sick society?

The book was an ok read. Medical mystery solved. Pretty girl goes back to work and becomes celebrated author. It could have been better. The author could have collaborated with the brilliant doctor who diagnosed her to present a proper check list of symptoms and of tests to be done, so that other people might have a better chance of diagnosis. For this, it's just three stars.

I'm going back to Florida next week just for a little break from this awful post-Irma third-world living. If I move there, it would be cheaper for me to fly up to the Caribbean every other month to get the prescription than to get it in the US. ...more

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Sep 03, 2013 Amanda L rated it liked it

Shelves: biography-or-memoir, 2014, neuro-brains, yay-science

All the while I had to wonder why her family was just so adamantly opposed to the idea of [their daughter being tainted by] mental illness? I guess their skepticism paid in the end since that wasn't the cause of her symptoms, but truly that is how everything she suffered was presenting (her age at the time all of this happened also fits the bill). It seems hard to fathom that (ostensible) privilege can land you in an exclusive neuro ward when if she hadn't come from money she'd have surely been ...more

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Oct 23, 2014 Christina rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2016, dc-marvel-challenge-2016

Fantastic and somewhat frightening book. It is hard to believe we still don't know so much stuff about the human brain or the human body for that matter and that something like this can strike someone without knowing the underlying cause and be misdiagnosed several times. Thankfully because Susannah Cahalan decided to share her harrowing story (which couldn't have been easy) many others have been saved. ...more

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Oct 19, 2015 Jana rated it really liked it

Shelves: audible

What a ride! I haven't stopped thinking about this poor woman's story since I started reading. Check out the review by fellow bibliophile Kats for a complete and much better review than I could write. But if you're interested in a true, and truly horrifying, experience of suffering an illness (specifically non NMDA receptor encephalitis) that displays all the characteristics of schizophrenia or other mental illness, then grab this and experience it with her.

Though a most unfortunate story, she w ...more

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Apr 30, 2017 Mary rated it really liked it

Shelves: science

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Apr 03, 2014 Timothy Finucane rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Imagine what it would be like if your brain suddenly stopped letting you be who you've always been, started causing you to have strange and erratic behavior. This is exactly what Susannah Cahalan experienced when her brain was attacked by her own immune system, an autoimmune disease called
NMDA-receptor autoimmune encephalitis. This is a rare disease that is often misdiagnosed as mental illness.

Between these pages Ms. Cahalan dives deep to expose the time she spent in the hospital, much of which

...more

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May 10, 2020 Sunshine rated it liked it

What a fascinating and terrifying experience that unfolds in this memoir by Susannah Cahalan. I very much appreciate the exposure this piece brings to what was otherwise an unknown affliction. My only criticism of the book was what felt like unnecessary inclusion of details that didn't feel relevant to the overall story. The type of blinds, the bananas in the oatmeal as a reader I felt a bit overwhelmed. Furthermore, I found it difficult to deduce just how serious Cahalan's condition was, with m ...more

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