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

nice, short read.

in three separate neuro classes in college, this book was mentioned or recommended. NMDARs, man. they're really, REALLY important. i really appreciated Cahalan's delivery of what could have, in another person's hands, been a lot of technical neuro jargon. i get enough of that as it is. she breaks down every component of the disease in layman's terms, but also doesn't talk down to the reader, and once she's introduced a concept she expects you to understand it. nice.

she splits the book up into three parts, but they are not, as I expected them to be, a before-during-after division. the story is pretty compelling, and takes advantage of the foregone conclusion that she is going to be okay. as her condition spirals, the question isn't "will she recover?" (because she clearly has), but instead "how will she recover?"

go Dr. Najjar, we love a competent medical professional! boo dr. bailey!

Spoiler

so frustrating to read him treat his (incredibly confident yet incorrect) diagnosis of alcohol withdrawal with such flippancy, especially because alcohol withdrawal is one of the few kinds that can actually kill a person.

although (as she points out) dude was likely overworked to hell and rewarded for it, so let's take issue with american medicine and not with the doctor himself.