smagdarine 's review for:

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan

4.0

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to completely lose yourself to something you can't control, a disease that originates within yourself and attacks without warning, is completely terrifying. cahalan had to completely rely on friends, family, and doctors to reconstruct what was happening to her - she has little to no memory of her time leading up to and just after treatment. closing the book was ultimately satisfying that she had answers, and painful that she was the exception, the rare diagnosis. as she said, how many other people have gone undiagnosed and simply were institutionalized and died? i love memoirs, and this was no exception.