Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness

Synopsis

'my First Serious Blackout Marked The Line Between Sanity And Insanity. Though I Would Have Moments Of Lucidity Over The Coming Days And Weeks, I Would Never Again Be The Same Person . . . ' Susannah Cahalan Was A Happy, Clever, Healthy Twenty-four-year Old. Then One Day She Woke Up In Hospital, With No Memory Of How She Had Got There. Within Weeks, She Would Be Transformed Into Someone Unrecognizable, Descending Into A State Of Acute Psychosis. This Is Susannah's Story Of Her Terrifying Descent Into Madness And The Desperate Hunt For A Diagnosis, As, After Dozens Of Tests And Scans, Baffled Doctors Concluded She Should Be Confined In A Psychiatric Ward. It Is Also The Story Of How One Brilliant Man, Syria-born Dr Najar, Finally Proved - Using A Simple Pen And Paper - That Susannah's Psychotic Behaviour Was Caused By A Rare Autoimmune Disease Attacking Her Brain. Cahalan Takes Readers Inside This Newly-discovered Disease Through The Progress Of Her Own Harrowing Journey, Asking What Happens When Your Identity Is Suddenly Destroyed, And How You Get It Back. 'with Eagle-eye Precision And Brutal Honesty, Susannah Cahalan Turns Her Journalistic Gaze On Herself As She Bravely Looks Back On One Of The Most Harrowing And Unimaginable Experience One Could Ever Face: The Loss Of Minds, Body And Self . . . A Mesmerizing Story.' Mira Bartók, New York Times Bestselling Author Of The Memory Palace