{"id":15091,"date":"2020-09-14T09:02:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-14T13:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=15091"},"modified":"2020-10-01T12:12:14","modified_gmt":"2020-10-01T16:12:14","slug":"brain-on-fire-true-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/brain-on-fire-true-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Brain on Fire: True Story and Medical Thriller"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Is <em>Brain on Fire<\/em> a true story? How did Susannah Cahalan write the <em>Brain on Fire <\/em>real story?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Brain on Fire <\/em>is a true story. Susannah Cahalan suffered seizures, hallucinations, paranoia, and more without doctors able to diagnose her for a month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>See what happened in the <em>Brain on Fire <\/em>true story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Writing the <em>Brain on Fire<\/em> True Story<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Susannah doesn&#8217;t remember her time in the hospital and needs to do research for the <em>Brain on Fire <\/em>true story. She and two colleagues from work attend a lecture <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/souhel-najjar\/\">Dr. Najjar<\/a> is giving on anti-NMDA-receptor encephalitis. In the lecture, he uses Susannah as a case study. Though he never cites Susannah\u2019s name, her colleagues recognize that the lecture is about Susannah.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Assignment to Write<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>That afternoon, the <em>Post<\/em>\u2019s Sunday editor asks Susannah if she\u2019d be willing to write the <em>Brain on Fire <\/em>true story as a first-person account of her illness. It\u2019s the assignment Susannah has been hoping for.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She has four days to write the story. She interviews Stephen, her family, and Drs. Najjar and Dalmau. She learns many things in the course of her research:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Children make up 40 percent of those diagnosed with the disease.<\/strong> Their symptoms include temper tantrums, violence, oversexuality, and mutism. They may start speaking in tongues or repeating other people\u2019s words. Their behavior is frequently misdiagnosed as autism. Formerly, it was described as evil, and exorcism was prescribed as the cure.<\/li><li><strong>Many adults diagnosed with the disease were originally diagnosed with schizophrenia or autism.<\/strong> A small number of doctors, including Dr. Najjar, are currently researching the link between schizophrenia, autism, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/what-causes-autoimmune-disease-diet\/\">autoimmune disease<\/a>. (Shortform note: In 2018, Dr. Najjar suggested the term \u201cautoimmune psychosis\u201d to designate a subset of diseases in which autoimmune disorders masquerade as psychosis. See <a href=\"https:\/\/jneuroinflammation.biomedcentral.com\/articles\/10.1186\/s12974-018-1067-y\">Najjar\u2019s recent research<\/a> published in the <em>Journal of Neuroinflammation<\/em>.)&nbsp;<\/li><li><strong>It\u2019s cost-prohibitive to test all psychiatric patients for an autoimmune disease. <\/strong>Susannah was lucky; she had a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/financial-safety-net\/\">financial safety net<\/a> that allowed for expensive testing. Many people with lifelong psychiatric conditions don\u2019t have that kind of safety net and may remain incorrectly diagnosed their entire lives.&nbsp;<\/li><li><strong>Many doctors don\u2019t keep abreast of current medical research.<\/strong> While writing her article, Susannah reached out to Dr. Bailey, the neurologist who had declared Susannah an alcoholic. She was shocked to find that he had never heard of anti-NMDA-receptor encephalitis, even though her case had recently been covered in every major medical journal, the <em>New England Journal of Medicine<\/em>, and the<em> New York Times.&nbsp;<\/em><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Illustrating the <em>Brain on Fire<\/em> Real Story <\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>To illustrate Susannah\u2019s article, the photo editor wants to run images from the EEG videos taken during Susannah\u2019s hospital stay. When Susannah sees herself onscreen, she shudders. There she is on camera, staring into the lens, her hair dirty, her hospital gown slipping off her shoulder. Her eyes blaze with manic fear, as if she\u2019s staring into the face of death. She mouths a single word: \u201cPlease.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Is <em>Brain on Fire <\/em>a true story? Susannah doesn&#8217;t even remember her time. Susannah is frightened by seeing herself so unhinged. What frightens her more, though, is the fact that emotions that once wracked her so completely have vanished entirely. <strong>The Susannah in the EEG video is a foreign entity to the Susannah writing about her own illness.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On October 4, Susannah\u2019s article runs in the <em>Post<\/em>. She receives hundreds of emails from people who have the disease and want to know more about it. They don&#8217;t ask, &#8220;Is Brain on Fire a true story?&#8221; She receives phone calls from people who want a diagnosis from Susannah herself. Acknowledging how lucky she is to have recovered, Susannah is overwhelmed by survivor\u2019s guilt. One man, whose wife is ill, calls Susannah and aggressively challenges, \u201cWhy did you get better while my wife\u2019s still sick? Are you so sure you won\u2019t get sick again?\u201d Two weeks later, he calls back to tell Susannah that his wife is dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yet Susannah receives other types of phone calls. One comes from Bill Gavigan, whose daughter fell ill and was routinely misdiagnosed for more than a year. The girl was saved only because Bill\u2019s sister sent him a video of Susannah talking about the disease on the <em>Today <\/em>show, along with Susannah\u2019s article in the <em>Post<\/em>. Bill gave the video and the article to his daughter\u2019s neurologist, who immediately agreed to test Bill\u2019s daughter for anti-NMDA-receptor encephalitis. The girl was diagnosed and treated by Dr. Dalmau\u2019s colleagues. She made a complete recovery. On the phone, Bill tells Susannah, \u201cWithout you, our daughter would be dead.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Brain on Fire real story is translated into Arabic and published in multiple papers throughout the Middle East. Syria\u2019s news agency publishes numerous stories of the Syrian boy who\u2019d become a miracle doctor in the US. The Syrian ambassador to the UN congratulates Najjar personally. That same year, Najjar is designated one of the best neurologists in the US by <em>New York Magazine<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Susannah returns to the <em>Post <\/em>full-time. She and Stephen move in together. In a few months, she feels comfortable in her own skin again. There\u2019s no longer a gap between what she feels inside and how other people see her. She doesn\u2019t struggle for words anymore. She feels in control. Most importantly, she\u2019s regained her old sense of humor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is Brain on Fire a true story? How did Susannah Cahalan write the Brain on Fire real story? Brain on Fire is a true story. Susannah Cahalan suffered seizures, hallucinations, paranoia, and more without doctors able to diagnose her for a month. See what happened in the Brain on Fire true story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":15315,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,16,30],"tags":[130],"class_list":["post-15091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-health","category-work","tag-brain-on-fire","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Brain on Fire: True Story and Medical Thriller - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The twists and turns make Susannah&#039;s story seem like fiction. But Brain on Fire is a true story. 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