Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness

by Susannah Cahalan

We are, in the end, a sum of our parts, and when the body fails, all the virtues we hold dear go with it.

Though I had been gradually losing more and more of myself over the past few weeks, the break between my consciousness and my physical body was now finally fully complete. In essence, I was gone. I wish I could understand my behaviors and motivations during this time, but there was no rational consciousness operating, nothing I could access anymore, then or now. This was the beginning of my lost month of madness.