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A review by eleanorfranzen
Brainstorm: Detective Stories From the World of Neurology by Suzanne O'Sullivan
3.0
Although it's subtitled "Detective Stories From the World of Neurology", Suzanne O'Sullivan's new book, Brainstorm, is really a series of case studies of epilepsy. "Detective stories" isn't too far off, though: all stories of diagnosis are stories of detection (this is made abundantly clear in, for instance, the structure of each episode of House; it's also maybe why Hugh Laurie's character in it has the substance abuse and anger management/personal life issues that we expect from our noir detectives; discuss.) In twelve chapters, each focusing on one of O'Sullivan's patients, we get glimpses of epilepsy symptoms that are rare, misunderstood, misdiagnosed, and sometimes not epilepsy at all. At the very least, Brainstorm is a very illuminating book about what seizures sometimes look like, and the ways in which they can be completely misinterpreted by the public. One of her patients, for instance, gets a kind of localised Tourette's; his seizures involve swearing and spitting. If he has a seizure in public, he risks not only disapproval and embarrassment, but arrest. (I wanted more of this from O'Sullivan, actually. She doesn't, for example, acknowledge that her black male patients face a much higher chance of being arrested, injured or killed for displaying abnormal social behaviour.)
There is a certain level of voyeuristic fascination in O'Sullivan's case studies that drives readerly interest. We learn about August, a bright young woman whose seizures make her compulsively bolt from rooms and across streets; Maya, an elderly Nigerian woman who suffers blackouts and sometimes finds herself miles from home; Wahid, whose family paid thousands to various local healers and pastors before his condition was diagnosed not as spirit possession but as epilepsy. O'Sullivan is simultaneously compassionate and objective about each of her patients: she clearly cares for their well-being, but also strives to view the evidence as thoroughly and impartially as possible. Her notes on the development of technology used in diagnosing neurological problems - CAT scans, MRI and fMRI machines, the merits and demerits of brain surgery - are informative, detailed and accessible. Sometimes there's a slight stiffness to the prose, but she's a doctor who writes, not a professional poet, and it's a small price to pay for the rest of the book's informativeness and optimistic outlook on the future of neurology.
There is a certain level of voyeuristic fascination in O'Sullivan's case studies that drives readerly interest. We learn about August, a bright young woman whose seizures make her compulsively bolt from rooms and across streets; Maya, an elderly Nigerian woman who suffers blackouts and sometimes finds herself miles from home; Wahid, whose family paid thousands to various local healers and pastors before his condition was diagnosed not as spirit possession but as epilepsy. O'Sullivan is simultaneously compassionate and objective about each of her patients: she clearly cares for their well-being, but also strives to view the evidence as thoroughly and impartially as possible. Her notes on the development of technology used in diagnosing neurological problems - CAT scans, MRI and fMRI machines, the merits and demerits of brain surgery - are informative, detailed and accessible. Sometimes there's a slight stiffness to the prose, but she's a doctor who writes, not a professional poet, and it's a small price to pay for the rest of the book's informativeness and optimistic outlook on the future of neurology.