Susannah Cahalan - Brain on Fire - My Month of Madness

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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 monthlong 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,
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.

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To Paul McPolin, my straight-shooting Post editor, you are, as I said, a brilliant editor, and your work and generosity show in these pages. To my Post neighbor Maureen Callahan, who spent many nights listening to me babble over martinis: your insights show on these pages as well. And to Angela Montefinise, who told me the book was “great” when it was far from it, who brought me a cheeseburger in the hospital, who rescued my blue-haired stray, Dusty: I am forever in your debt. And thank you to the extraordinary Julie Stapen not only for bringing some needed levity (with her now infamous “poop” picture) but also for spending two hours patiently shooting me in search of the perfect author photo.

Thank you to Katie Strauss for the stuffed rat, Jennifer Arms for the pumpernickel bagel, Lindsey Derrington for visiting me all the way from St. Louis, Colleen Gutwein for those gorgeous pictures of Cambodia, Mackenzie Dawson for her Sartre quote, and Ginger Adams Otis and Zach Haberman for taking care of Dusty when I wasn’t able to.

To the New York Post, and especially the Sunday staff, which has been so supportive during my illness and throughout the writing of this book. The Post ’s cast of characters are among my closest friends. Thank you to the following who have helped in one way or another with the writing of this book: Jim Fanelli, Hasani Gittens, Sue Edelman, Liz Pressman, Isabel Vincent, Rob Walsh, and Kirsten Fleming. Thanks to Steve Lynch, who edited the article “My Mysterious Lost Month of Madness,” on which this book is based, and to my first editor, Lauren Ramsby, who taught me the value of asking that extra “why.”

To the friends and family who offered up their valued perspectives: the Goldmans, the Fasanos, Rosemarie Terenzio, Bryan Cirelli, Jay Turon, Sarah Nurre, Frank Fenimore, Kelsey Kiefer, Calle Gartside, David Bernard, Kristy Schwarzman, Beth Starker, and Jeff Vines. And thank you to Preston Browning, who offered me a place to write at his charming Wellspring House, which has become my second home.

And, finally, thank you to the “purple lady,” whose name I still don’t know.

ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

Illustration by Morgan Schweitzer: pages 1, 42, 73, 117, 173, 235, 251

Medical record: pages 75, 90, 92, 119

Illustration by Morgan Schweitzer and Susannah Cahalan: page 132

Images from Dr. Josep Dalmau, University of Pennsylvania, Department of Neurology: page 148

Images from Dr. Souhel Najjar, NYU Medical Center, Departments of Neurology and Neuropathology: page 219

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

AUTHOR PHOTO BY JULIE STAPEN Susannah Cahalan began her investigative reporting - фото 75
AUTHOR PHOTO BY JULIE STAPEN

Susannah Cahalan began her investigative reporting career at the New York Post when she took an internship in her senior year of high school. She has now been there for ten years. Her work has also been featured in the New York Times and the Czech Business Weekly, where she worked when she studied abroad during her junior year of college. She was the recipient of the Silurian Award of Excellence in Journalism for Feature Writing for the article “My Mysterious Lost Month of Madness,” on which this book is based. She lives in Jersey City, New Jersey.

MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT
SimonandSchuster.com
• THE SOURCE FOR READING GROUPS •

JACKET PHOTOS: (TOP) COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR;

(BOTTOM) KEVIN TRAGESER/IMAGE BANK/GETTY

COPYRIGHT © 2012 SIMON & SCHUSTER

authors.simonandschuster.com/Susannah-Cahalan

NOTES

CHAPTER 1 BEDBUG BLUES 1 those suffering from parasitosis Nancy C Hinkle - фото 76

CHAPTER 1: BEDBUG BLUES

1 those suffering from parasitosis: Nancy C. Hinkle, “Delusory Parasitosis,” American Entomologist 46, no. 1 (2000): 17–25, http://www.entuga.edu/pubs/delusory.pdf(accessed August 2, 2011).

2 releasing millions of virus particles: Vincent Racaniello, “Virology 101,” Virology Blog: About Viruses and Diseases, http://www.virology.ws/virology-101/(accessed March 1, 2011). Robert Kulwich, “Flu Attack! How the Virus Invades Your Body,” NPR.org [blog], October 23, 2009 (accessed March 1, 2011).

CHAPTER 4: THE WRESTLER

3 “I used to try to forget about you”: Robert D. Siegel, The Wrestler, directed by Darren Aronofsky, Fox Searchlight, 2008.

CHAPTER 7: ON THE ROAD AGAIN

4 “That’s nice to have at seven in the morning”: “Basking in Basque Country,” Spain… on the Road Again, PBS, New York, original broadcast date October 18, 2008.

CHAPTER 8: OUT-OF-BODY EXPERIENCE

5 complex partial seizures: Epilepsy Foundation, “Temporal Lobe Epilepsy,” Epilepsyfoundation.org, http://www.epilepsyfoundation.org/aboutepilepsy/syndromes/temporallobeepilepsy.cfm(accessed March 1, 2011). Temkin Owsei, The Falling Sickness: A History of Epilepsy from the Greeks to the Beginnings of Modern Neurology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971).

6 range from a “Christmas morning”: Alice W. Flaherty, The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block and the Creative Brain (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004), 27.

7 religious experiences: Akira Ogata and Taihei Miyakawa, “Religious Experience in Epileptic Patients with Focus on Ictal-Related Episodes,” Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences 52 (1998): 321–325, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1440–1819.1998.00397.x/pdf.

8 A small subset of those with temporal lobe epilepsy: Shahar Arzy, Gregor Thut, Christine Mohr, Christoph M. Michel, and Olaf Blanke, “Neural Basis of Embodiment: Distinct Contributions of Temporoparietal Junction and Extrastriate Body Area,” Journal of Neuroscience 26 (2006): 8074–8081.

CHAPTER 9: A TOUCH OF MADNESS

9 best places to live in America by Money magazine: CNN Money, “Best Places to Live: 2005,” Money.CNN.com, http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bplive/2005/snapshots/30683.html(accessed Thursday, April 12, 2012).

10 “a brain disorder that causes unusual shifts in moods”: National Institutes of Health, “Bipolar Disorder,” NIH.gov, http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/bipolar-disorder/nimh-bipolar-adults.pdf(accessed March 14, 2009).

11 Jim Carrey, Winston Churchill, Mark Twain, Vivien Leigh, Ludwig van Beethoven, Tim Burton: Bipolar Disorder Today, “Famous People with Bipolar Disorder,” Mental-Health-Today.com, http://www.mental-health-today.com/bp/famous_people.htm(accessed March 14, 2009).

CHAPTER 15: THE CAPGRAS DELUSION

12 her husband had become a “double”: Orin Devinsky, “Delusional Misidentifications and Duplications,” Neurology 72 (2009): 80–87.

13 revealed that Capgras delusions: Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, “Seeing Imposters: When Loved Ones Suddenly Aren’t,” NPR, March 30, 2010, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124745692(accessed May 4, 2011). V. S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee, Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind (New York: Morrow, 1998), 161–171.

CHAPTER 16: POSTICTAL FURY

14 twelve hours or as long as three months: Orin Devinsky, “Postictal Psychosis: Common, Dangerous, and Treatable,” Epilepsy Currents, February 26, 2008, 31–34. Kenneth Alper et al., “Premorbid Psychiatric Risk Factors for Postictal Psychosis,” Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience 13 (2001): 492–499. Akira Ogata and Taihei Miyakawa, “Religious Experience in Epileptic Patients with Focus on Ictal-Related Episodes,” Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience 52 (1998): 321–325.

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