Samuel Seibert

Book Review: Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan

 

Meta

 

• Who would benefit from reading this book?

If you have a one dimensional view of psychiatric and neurological issues, this book could be a gentle introduction into how complex diagnosing someone can be.

 

• What could you get out of this book?

Compassion for someone going through neurological struggle.

The enjoyment of a fast paced, info packed, non-fiction story.

 

• Author’s Site 

• Time to Read: I completed the text in about a week, reading a chapter or so each evening.

• Pages & Highlights: 290 Pages. 33 passages caught my attention as worth highlighting.

• Structure:

The first 75% of the book is a fast paced story told by Cahalan as her life is turned upside down and shaken out by the illness overtaking her. In the last 25% Cahalan switches gears and reflects on her experience and how it had changed her perspectives on medical care, and new connections it had afforded her with people going through similar health scares.

• Thesis: Don’t toss around the term “crazy”.

 

 

Summary

Cahalan’s description of the book on YouTube, approximately 4 minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Najj0aVLJwU

I think the book is a great example of the need for patient advocacy. It describes that need through a gripping story with energy that pulls you along. There was also a challenge for me around how I think about, or don’t think about, people with mental or neurological disorders. I took it as a gauntlet to be more humbly compassionate about the complexity of these issues and how I might interact with someone if they have or did have a disorder.

This book is a chance to walk in a pair of shoes that you did not even know existed.

 

 

Top Three Quotations

 

When reading a book I’m constanting looking for notable excerpts that challenged my thinking and present the freeze dried goodness of the text.

 

1.) “Not only did I believe that my family members were turning into other people, which is an aspect of paranoid hallucinations, but I also insisted that my father was an imposter. That delusion has a more specific name, Capgras syndrome, which a French psychiatrist, Joseph Capgras, first described in 1923 when he encountered a woman who believed that her husband had become a ‘double.'” – loc. 1,276

 

One of the elements I think you will enjoy a lot about Cahalan’s writing is the insertion of researched tidbits throughout the narrative. It takes the story from being entertainment to high quality edutainment.

 

2.) “I turn away and look at Stephen, who stares back at me. Stephen’s stubble morphs from brown into a muted gray; his hair turns white like snow. He looks like his father. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch the doctor. Now she is growing more radiant with each passing second. All the wrinkles on her face smooth out, her eyes grow pert and oblong, her cheeks gain baby fat, and her hair turns a deep chestnut brown. She’s thirty, twenty, thirteen. I have a gift. I can age people with my mind. This is who I am. And they cannot take this away from me. I am powerful. Stronger than I have ever been in my life.”  – loc. 1,401

 

One of the fascinating images Cahalan describes to give us a taste of what it was like to have the illness and how it skewed her perception of reality. Reading these almost other-worldly descriptions felt like a neat behind the scenes treat.

 

3.) “In the spring of 2009, I was the 217th person ever to be diagnosed with anti-NMDA-receptor autoimmune encephalitis. Just a year later, that figure had doubled. Now the number is in the thousands. Yet Dr. Bailey, considered one of the best neurologists in the country, had never heard of it.”  – loc. 4,321

 

It’s a great example highlighting the value of getting second opinions. Brain on Fire is a great example of how our lives can depend on being in the driver seat of our medical care.

 

 

Challenge

Having read Cahalan’s description of her illness, and seeing the frothing sentiments she couldn’t express, I was challenged in how I regard individuals with neurological issues. When I try to converse with an individual with neurological issues, I feel nervous and unsure of myself. Which is selfishness. The challenge is to lean towards someone in a mental space that hard for me to fathom out of compassion, rather than being arrested by selfishness.

 

 

-SRS
 
 
Disclaimer:
The Amazon links used in this post are affiliate links. That means if you click through the Amazon links and buy the book, it does NOT cost you anything extra but Amazon does send me a tiny % as a thank you.

If you found this helpful, and do decide to get the book, please purchase it through one of the links here.

Thanks ^_^