Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan
I bought this in the fall of 2016 with the intention of reading it while my Pre-AP students read this as a choice for their nonfiction "lit" circles. I started it, got thirty-something pages in, and just couldn't get into it. I dug it off the bookcase in our media room the other day, and haven't been able to put it down.
This is a true story. Susannah Cahalan wrote for a newspaper in New York. One day, she starts to feel so unlike herself. She doesn't trust her boyfriend, feels paranoid, and just out of sorts. She thought she was bi-polar, so she is put on meds for it, but that, as it turns out, is not the problem.
Everything starts out with issues that could be psychological, but then she starts having seizures. If not for the seizures, she may never have gotten the proper care. She also becomes catatonic, and her speech slows way down. It takes nearly a month in the hospital to find out what is wrong with her: an autoimmune encephalitis.
This book is her looking back, and with the help of people who care for her, she is able to piece together that month she "lost."
It's weird how you can start a book and not be into it at all, so you put it aside. Then you decided to give it another try, and it clicks.
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