A review by wonceuponatime
Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan

4.0

I heard some good things about this book when it came out, but I knew I would never get around to reading it myself -- so I listened to the audio version from Audible. The narrator is very good, and the story is fascinating/scary/amazing, but it is (at times) so intense I could only get through small bits at a time. Cahalan is able to tell her story in a compelling and fairly unbiased way, combining details from medical reports, personal diaries, and endless hours of interviews. After initially being "diagnosed" as a stressed-out, depressed alcoholic (which everyone knew she was not), Cahalan's disease continued to ravage her brain and her body, landing her in psych wards and hospital wings for epileptics, until one neurologist finally began to put the pieces of her puzzle together.