Brain On Fire

Ty Campana
Brain On Fire 
Susannah Cahalan


You have the perfect life, living in New York City, working as a journalist for a top notch newspaper, and in a happy relationship. Now imagine waking up one morning and a switch has gone off. Suddenly the flashing lights of the city pierce your eyes and give you a horrible migraine. The sound of people talking makes you want to rip your ears off, you cant even think about food without throwing up, and you can see bedbugs all over your bed even though you know they aren't there. This was Susannah Cahalan's life and it was only the beginning.

When Susannah woke up looking and sounding like a zombie, that's when her boyfriend Stephen knew that this was serious problem. It was described as a "nightmarish scene" when she woke up. "he though the sounds were just me having trouble sleeping but, when he turned over to face me, I was sitting upright, my eyes wide open, dilated but unseeing... my arm suddenly whipped out in front of me , like a mummy as my eyes rolled back and i started to foam at the mouth." (40). This ended up being a seizure and after this horrible scene she went right to the emergency room.

When she woke up in the emergency room she had no recollection of what had happened just hours before. They doctors quickly threw her out after naming the episode as a seizure because this was for "emergency's only". Stephen called Susannah's parents and she went to stay with them until they figured out what was wrong with her.

After reading only 65 pages of Brain on Fire you really get a sense of who Susannah is and how she is really strong and doesn't stop until she get what she wants. The book is written really well and is always keeping you interested. I am excited to read the rest of Susannah's story and see the final verdict of what mental illness that she has and if she gets better.

I would defiantly recommend this book because of how interesting it is to read about all of the different episodes that's Susannah has and how much of a medical mystery her case was. She goes from being diagnosed with everything from mono, to bipolar disorder and more because new things come along as time goes by to make these previous diagnoses make no sense. "She's tough, She is always under a lot of stress and deals with it better than anyone Ive ever met, bipolar just makes no sense to  me. 'me neither' my mom said 'me neither..."(53). I would recommend this book to anyone from the ages of fifteen and up because there is a lot of mature language and just things that are hard to understand. My mom is actually the one that showed me this book and we both love it so that shows how wide of a range that this book can entertain.