Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan

If you've ever watched the TV show "House" before, then you'll have an idea of what this book will be like. We meet a young, thriving Susannah at the age of 24.  Susannah starts experiencing some mild medical issues when she thinks she has a case of bed bugs in her apartment.  Her health quickly declines with terrifying problems.  What starts as flu like symptoms turns into seizures, paranoia, and even hallucinations.

Doctors run a multitude of tests on her.  They all come back with clean results and no diagnosis.  With no concrete evidence to go off of, the initial guesses from doctors range from bipolar disorder to mono.  One clueless doctor even tells her that she must be suffering from alcohol withdrawal and just needs to lay off her partying weekends.  Her seizures continue to progress with no signs of stopping, so she is checked into NYU's epilepsy ward.

Susannah's boyfriend, Stephen, is ever-present during her entire hospital stay.  Remarkably, they had only been dating for 6 months prior to her hospitalization.  Susannah's estranged parents are also very involved.  Since they still had issues with one another, they communicated all of the day's medical updates through a journal to one another.  Susannah also introduces the reader to nurses and doctors who are assigned to her case.

Before Susannah's disaster, she was a a journalist with the New York Post.  Putting her journalistic skills to use, she recreates her "month of madness" because she couldn't remember all of it herself.  She interviewed, researched, and pieced together information from her family, boyfriend, hospital staff, doctors, etc and was able to amazingly cover all of the time that she couldn't remember.  She was able to weave it together seamlessly.  The amount of effort she put into reconstructing her narrative is what impressed me the most.  She is able to give you enough insight to the medical information so you can understand the whole picture without getting lost in the jargon.

I don't want to give any spoilers to this book by explaining her final diagnosis.  You'll have to read it to find out yourself!  It is really difficult to write much more without giving too much information away!

The book is just under 300 pages, and it took me 3 sittings to finish the book.  I didn't even notice the time that flew by when I would sit down and read it.  After reading "Atlas Shrugged," I wanted a book that was really gripping and easy to read.  The internet helped me on my quest to find something exciting.  I found this book on quite a few different "must read" lists online.  It currently has a 3.99 out of 5 star rating on the website Goodreads.  Susannah posted on her Instagram (linked here) that they were planning on making a movie out of the book with Chloe Grace Moretz to star in the film.  I can imagine that this would make a great movie.  I would highly recommend this book if medical mysteries interest you!  Happy reading everyone!