I knew that people enjoyed medical mysteries - “House” was one of the biggest shows on television at the time - but I had no clue that there was such a need for a story like mine. In the days that followed, I received hundreds of emails. I could never have dreamed what would come next. A month in - after a brain biopsy and several spinal taps - I received my diagnosis and became the 217th person in the world with a newly discovered form of immune-mediated brain disease called anti-NMDA receptor autoimmune encephalitis.
#BRAIN ON FIRE FULL#
By the second week in the hospital, I could no longer write my own name, couldn’t walk on my own, and barely could utter full sentences. Their working diagnosis was schizoaffective disorder. After grand mal seizures and a delusional breakdown at my father’s house, I was finally hospitalized. Weeks later I became manic and psychotic. I was lethargic, depressed, unmotivated - and completely obsessed by the notion that bed bugs had invaded my apartment. My initial symptoms emerged a few months before my hospitalization. I remember bracing myself as I tried to anticipate what it would be like to say such intimate and impossible things to millions of people. I didn’t remember my mom’s wavering voice as she spoke about my seizure or my dad breaking down as he read from his diaries about me. I remember the bright lights of the studio and stifling the urge to laugh when I heard my name on the prerecorded segment about “one woman’s month of madness.” There was the grainy hospital footage of a woman - of me, I remind myself - hallucinating, calling out for help: “I’m on the TV.” I remember a flash of self-conscious clarity when I noticed my failed attempt to curl my hair for the interview. Even today, looking back, I can still feel the prickly sensation akin to dread located in the pit of my stomach. It was January 2010, a few weeks before my 25th birthday.
#BRAIN ON FIRE HOW TO#
With the appropriate treatment, including immunotherapy, more than 80 percent of patients significantly improve or completely recover, although the recovery process can take months to years.I appeared on TODAY 10 months after I learned how to speak again. The antibodies disrupt normal brain signaling and cause psychosis, severe memory problems, seizures, abnormal movements and other neurologic symptoms. Dalmau in 2007, the body creates antibodies against NMDA receptors which are critical for normal brain function including controlling memory and behavior. The anti-NMDAR encephalitis is an autoimmune neurological disease that involves the neuronal NMDA receptors. If so, there will be a great service to patients, families and medical personnel, improving the knowledge on the disease and perhaps increasing the interest in research, so necessary, in brain diseases". Dalmau, who personally knows the Susannah Cahalan, said: " I hope the film adaptation is faithful to the facts that are so well described in the book.
The film is produced by Charlize Theron, starring actress Chloë Grace Moretz and written and directed by Gerard Barrett.ĭr.
#BRAIN ON FIRE SERIES#
After a series of outbreaks, misdiagnosis, and a long hospital stay, finally a doctor gives you a diagnosis and hope to rebuild their lives. As the weeks go Susannah enters a state where violence happens to catatonia inexplicably.
" Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness" is the memoir of Susannah Cahalan, a young reporter at the New York Post who mysteriously starts having seizures and hearing voices.
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