Bedbugs, Paranoia, Catatonia . . . Oh My!

Brain on Fire
by Susannah Cahalan

Imagine you see tiny bug bites on your left forearm.  There has been a bedbug scare in your community and you begin to fear that the little critters have invaded your home.  No worries . . . you call an exterminator and take care of the nuisance.  (Even though perhaps there never really were any bugs or bites in the first place.)  But then stranger things begin to happen to you.  Things that are not easily fixed.  Happenings that eventually land you in a hospital, or perhaps a mental institution.  Hallucinations and paranoia grip your otherwise rational mind.  Your body begins to betray you.  Words drift, lost in a sea of confusion.  Headaches plague you.  You may even be housing a  teratoma – a tumor, usually benign, potentially sporting teeth, hair, eyes, even limbs!  Further degeneration results in seizures, zombie-link posturing, violence, even catatonia – you're near the brink of death! 

The aforementioned symptoms are not taken from the script of a sci-fi movie, but are descriptions of some of the things that actually happened to journalist Susannah Cahalan in 2009, one of the first patients to be diagnosed with Anti-NMDA Receptor Encephalitis.  A fascinating and informative read that is not for the faint of heart, Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness vividly chronicles the course of this disease that almost took her life, verbally painting an intense portrait of the events that finally led to her diagnosis and treatment.  Brain on Fire is well-written (Cahalan is a journalist by trade), interesting, and worth the time it may take a reader to work through the medical jargon that Cahalan presents and breaks down for us.  Her book also asks intriguing questions about the origins of this autoimmune disease, leading many to wonder just how long it’s been plaguing humans.  Have we been misdiagnosing it under the guise of false labels such as schizophrenia? Autism?  Even demonic possession?  Are there people rotting away in mental institutions with wrong diagnoses that perhaps could be cured with steroids and other therapies to treat brain inflammation?

For further information on Anti-NMDA Receptor Autoimmune Encephalitis, check out these links to scholarly articles by some of the doctors instrumental in researching and bringing to light this particularly tragic form of brain disease.  

Post your own thoughts and reviews of Cahalan's book and Anti-NMDA Receptor Encephalitis  here, on our blog, for other readers to peruse and comment upon.  And, ahem, don't let those bedbugs bite . . . .