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Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness

Susannah Cahalan

Start date: February 1, 2021

Finish date: February 16, 2021

Discussion: Monthly Bonus Reads

Why we're reading this: February Bonus Read- Rare Disease Day

Brain on Fire My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan
[close] February Bonus Read- Rare Disease Day

Brain on Fire My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan

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What Members Thought

Mar 13, 2014 Ammar rated it really liked it · review of another edition

It all started with a ' bed bug bite'. An odyssey of a reporter at The New York Post. Susannah Cahalan describes her month of illness.

Brain on Fire sheds the light on an under discovered illness that is autoimmune and attacks the brain. An inflammation of some sort that may be caused by various reasons.

over 48 chapters. most are short and combine memories and extracts from diaries written during the hospital stay and treatment.

her parents are vital also Susannah's boyfriend is there for her i ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

Jul 09, 2017 Mom2triplets04 rated it really liked it

Shelves: books-i-own-read, audio-listened, memory-loss

True story about the author who at age 24 wound up in a mental institution. She was a journalist at a newspaper and one day she experienced bizarre behavior, slurred Speach and seizures. Very frightening where all the many tests she went through came back normal. Finally they found a cause of the weird behavior. The book can get very technical with medical terms. Glad she found an answer to her disease.

2 likes · Like · see review

Mar 04, 2020 Judy Lindow rated it it was ok

Brain on Fire is a harrowing story retold by the young woman with a rare auto-immune illness that attacked her brain, memory, behavior, and motor skills. The book describes the sudden onset of seizures, mental illness and scary symptoms while medical teams attempt to diagnose what's going on - before time runs out.

This is interesting journalism because it's her trying to unravel what happened using video, other people's memories, her own memory when it's available, research, and other evidence. ...more

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May 08, 2016 Kaytlin rated it really liked it

Shelves: auto-and-biography, scribd-read, read-2016

This is one of those books that makes you a compulsive reader determined to keep reading to find out what happens. Susannah Cahalan's account of her illness and recovery was brutally honest and eye-opening on so many levels. ...more

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