Brain on Fire (38 page)

Thank you to Katie Strauss for the stuffed rat, Jennifer Arms for the pumpernickel bagel, Lindsey Derrington for visiting me all the way from St. Louis, Colleen Gutwein for those gorgeous pictures of Cambodia, Mackenzie Dawson for her Sartre quote, and Ginger Adams Otis and Zach Haberman for taking care of Dusty when I wasn’t able to.

To the
New York Post,
and especially the Sunday staff, which has been so supportive during my illness and throughout the writing of this book. The
Post
’s cast of characters are among my closest friends. Thank you to the following who have helped in one way or another with the writing of this book: Jim Fanelli, Hasani Gittens, Sue Edelman, Liz Pressman, Isabel Vincent, Rob Walsh, and Kirsten Fleming. Thanks to Steve Lynch, who edited the article “My Mysterious Lost Month of Madness,” on which this book is based, and to my first editor, Lauren Ramsby, who taught me the value of asking that extra “why.”

To the friends and family who offered up their valued perspectives: the Goldmans, the Fasanos, Rosemarie Terenzio, Bryan Cirelli, Jay Turon, Sarah Nurre, Frank Fenimore, Kelsey Kiefer, Calle Gartside, David Bernard, Kristy Schwarzman, Beth Starker, and Jeff Vines. And thank you to Preston Browning, who offered me a place to write at his charming Wellspring House, which has become my second home.

And, finally, thank you to the “purple lady,” whose name I still don’t know.

Illustration by Morgan Schweitzer: pages
1
,
42
,
73
,
117
,
173
,
235
,
251

Medical record: pages
75
,
90
,
92
,
119

Illustration by Morgan Schweitzer and Susannah Cahalan: page
132

Images from Dr. Josep Dalmau, University of Pennsylvania, Department of Neurology: page
148

Images from Dr. Souhel Najjar, NYU Medical Center, Departments of Neurology and Neuropathology: page
219

AUTHOR PHOTO BY JULIE STAPEN

Susannah Cahalan began her investigative reporting career at the
New York Post
when she took an internship in her senior year of high school. She has now been there for ten years. Her work has also been featured in the
New York Times
and the
Czech Business Weekly,
where she worked when she studied abroad during her junior year of college. She was the recipient of the Silurian Award of Excellence in Journalism for Feature Writing for the article “My Mysterious Lost Month of Madness,” on which this book is based. She lives in Jersey City, New Jersey.

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1
those suffering from parasitosis: Nancy C. Hinkle, “Delusory Parasitosis,”
American Entomologist
46, no. 1 (2000): 17–25,
http://www.entuga.edu/pubs/delusory.pdf
(accessed August 2, 2011).

2
releasing millions of virus particles: Vincent Racaniello, “Virology 101,”
Virology Blog: About Viruses and Diseases,
http://www.virology.ws/virology-101/
(accessed March 1, 2011). Robert Kulwich, “Flu Attack! How the Virus Invades Your Body,”
NPR.org
[blog], October 23, 2009 (accessed March 1, 2011).

3
“I used to try to forget about you”: Robert D. Siegel,
The Wrestler,
directed by Darren Aronofsky, Fox Searchlight, 2008.

4
“That’s nice to have at seven in the morning”: “Basking in Basque Country,”
Spain . . . on the Road Again,
PBS, New York, original broadcast date October 18, 2008.

5
complex partial seizures: Epilepsy Foundation, “Temporal Lobe Epilepsy,”
Epilepsyfoundation.org
,
http://www.epilepsyfoundation.org/aboutepilepsy/syndromes/temporallobeepilepsy.cfm
(accessed March 1, 2011). Temkin Owsei,
The Falling Sickness: A History of Epilepsy from the Greeks to the Beginnings of Modern Neurology
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971).

6
range from a “Christmas morning”: Alice W. Flaherty,
The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block and the Creative Brain
(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004), 27.

7
religious experiences: Akira Ogata and Taihei Miyakawa, “Religious Experience in Epileptic Patients with Focus on Ictal-Related Episodes,”
Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences
52 (1998): 321–325,
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1440–1819.1998.00397.x/pdf
.

8
A small subset of those with temporal lobe epilepsy: Shahar Arzy, Gregor Thut, Christine Mohr, Christoph M. Michel, and Olaf Blanke, “Neural Basis of Embodiment: Distinct Contributions of Temporoparietal Junction and Extrastriate Body Area,”
Journal of Neuroscience
26 (2006): 8074–8081.

9
best places to live in America by
Money
magazine:
CNN Money,
“Best Places to Live: 2005,”
Money.CNN.com
,
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bplive/2005/snapshots/30683.html
(accessed Thursday, April 12, 2012).

10
“a brain disorder that causes unusual shifts in moods”: National Institutes of Health, “Bipolar Disorder,” NIH.gov,
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/bipolar-disorder/nimh-bipolar-adults.pdf
(accessed March 14, 2009).

11
Jim Carrey, Winston Churchill, Mark Twain, Vivien Leigh, Ludwig van Beethoven, Tim Burton:
Bipolar Disorder Today,
“Famous People with Bipolar Disorder,”
Mental-Health-Today.com
,
http://www.mental-health-today.com/bp/famous_people.htm
(accessed March 14, 2009).

12
her husband had become a “double”: Orin Devinsky, “Delusional Misidentifications and Duplications,”
Neurology
72 (2009): 80–87.

13
revealed that Capgras delusions: Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, “Seeing Imposters: When Loved Ones Suddenly Aren’t,” NPR, March 30, 2010,
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124745692
(accessed May 4, 2011). V. S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee,
Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind
(New York: Morrow, 1998), 161–171.

14
twelve hours or as long as three months: Orin Devinsky, “Postictal Psychosis: Common, Dangerous, and Treatable,”
Epilepsy Currents,
February 26, 2008, 31–34. Kenneth Alper et al., “Premorbid Psychiatric Risk Factors for Postictal Psychosis,”
Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience
13 (2001): 492–499. Akira Ogata and Taihei Miyakawa, “Religious Experience in Epileptic Patients with Focus on Ictal-Related Episodes,”
Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience
52 (1998): 321–325.

15
“postictal fury”: S. J. Logsdail and B. K. Toone, “Post-Ictal Psychoses: A Clinical and Phenomenological Description,”
British Journal of Psychiatry
152 (1988): 246–252.

16
A quarter of psychotic people: Michael Trimble, Andy Kanner, and Bettina Schmitz, “Postictal Psychosis,”
Epilepsy and Behavior
19 (2010): 159–161.

17
I was within the age range for psychotic breaks: The New York Times Health Guide, “Schizophrenia,”
Health.nytimes.com
,
http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/schizophrenia/risk-factors.html
(accessed February 20, 2010).

18
dissociative identity disorder (DID): “Dissociative Identity Disorder,” in American Psychiatric Association,
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—IV (Text Revision)
(Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 2 000), 526–529.

19
On of a scale from 1 (most dire cases) to 100: “Bipolar Disorder,” in ibid.

20
“Like a bolt from the blue”: P. A. Pichot, “A Comparison of Different National Concepts of Schizoaffective Psychosis,” in
Schizoaffective Psychoses
(Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1986), 8–16. A. Marneros and M. T. Tsuang, “Schizoaffective Questions and Directions,” in
Schizoaffective Psychoses
(Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1986).

21
“uninterrupted period of illness during”: American Psychiatric Association,
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—IV (Text Revision)
(Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 2000), 319–323.

22
In 1933, a bicycle struck seven-year-old Henry Gustav Molaison: Luke Dittrich, “The Brain That Changed Everything,”
Esquire.com
, October 5, 2010,
www.esquire.com/features/henry-molaison-brain-1110
(accessed May 8, 2011). “Histopathological Examination of the Brain of Amnesiac Patient H.M.,”
Brain Observatory,
August 18, 2010,
http://thebrainobservatory.ucsd.edu/content/histopathological-examination-brain-amnesic-patient-hm
(accessed May 8, 2011). William Beecher Scoville and Brenda Milner, “Loss of Recent Memory after Bilateral Hippocampal Lesions,”
Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry
20 (1957): 11–21. Benedict Carey, “H.M., an Unforgettable Amnesiac, Dies at 82,”
New York Times,
December 5, 2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/us/05hm.html?pagewanted=all
(accessed May 8, 2011).

23
“Clive was under the constant impression”: Deborah Wearing,
Forever Today: A True Story of Lost Memory and Never-Ending Love
(London: Corgi, 2006).

24
“I haven’t heard anything”: Oliver Sacks, “The Abyss: Music and Amnesia,”
New Yorker,
September 24, 2007,
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/09/24/070924fa_fact_sacks
(accessed September 13, 2011).