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My Month of Madness
Free Press
November 2012
On Sale: November 13, 2012
288 pages
ISBN: 145162137X
EAN: 9781451621372
Kindle: B007EDOKZW
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Memoir
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, Brain on Fire 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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