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The healthy brain is a symphony of 100 billion neurons, the actions of each individual brain cell harmonizing into a whole that enables thoughts, movements, memories, or even just a sneeze. But it takes only one dissonant instrument to mar the cohesion of a symphony. When neurons begin to play nonstop, out of tune, and all at once because of disease, trauma, tumor, lack of sleep, or even alcohol withdrawal, the cacophonous result can be a seizure.
We are, in the end, a sum of our parts, and when the body fails, all the virtues we hold dear go with it.
“No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness,” Aristotle said.
The mind is like a circuit of Christmas tree lights. When the brain works well, all of the lights twinkle brilliantly, and it’s adaptable enough that, often, even if one bulb goes out, the rest will still shine on. But depending on where the damage is, sometimes that one blown bulb can make the whole strand go dark.
“Her brain is on fire,” he repeated. They nodded, eyes wide. “Her brain is under attack by her own body.”
“So what do you think it is?” my mom prodded. “Actually, Dr. Najjar and I have a bet going.” “What kind of a bet?” “Well, Dr. Najjar thinks the inflammation is caused by auto-immune encephalitis; I think it’s paraneoplastic syndrome.”
The absolute freaking balls to bet on the diagnosis of someone so critically unwell
Sometimes, just when we need them, life wraps metaphors up in little bows for us. When you think all is lost, the things you need the most return unexpectedly.
Dr. Najjar, for one, is taking the link between autoimmune diseases and mental illnesses one step further: through his cutting-edge research, he posits that some forms of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and depression are actually caused by inflammatory conditions in the brain.
The girl in the video is a reminder about how fragile our hold on sanity and health is and how much we are at the utter whim of our Brutus bodies, which will inevitably, one day, turn on us for good. I am a prisoner, as we all are. And with that realization comes an aching sense of vulnerability.
Friedrich Nietzsche said: “The existence of forgetting has never been proved: we only know that some things do not come to our mind when we want them to.”
