Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Sarah Cahalan
This book begins by retelling an incident where the author hallucinated bed bugs in her apartment; at first glance her fears seemed reasonable. Cahalan describes how she became obsessed with the possible bed bugs in her home then all over her body. The bed bugs were blown out of proportion to the point where Cahalan felt the need to scour her home and throw away many of her treasured items. I related to Cahalan at this point in her story because at stressful times I reorganized areas around me to feel in control of my life. Cahalan’s peers wondered why she was making such a big deal out of the situation but she felt as though no one was listening or understanding her.
The language used in …show more content…
Cahalan discusses why discovering the name of illness was so important to her, she felt alone and misunderstood in her personal fight. With the name of the disease Cahalan finally had something to validate her personal dilemmas.
Dr. Najjar started an aggressive treatment plan to hopefully reverse the effects of the disease. Cahalan created a baseline to grow from by doing simple tasks like drawing a clock and writing in a daily journal. In the book there is a recreation of the clock she drew while ill and the reader gets the chance to visualize how strenuous and gruesome her disease was. Cahalan also provides images of her journal entries while staying at the hospital, the reader can see how some entries are crossed out because Cahalan changed her mind and felt different.
Eventually Cahalan is allowed to return home and she feels the responsibility to piece together the month of time she lost while in the hospital. Cahalan takes advantage of her peers, journal entries, hospital video and various interviews to try to recall her past. Cahalan makes it clear that she felt completely out of herself while she was sick, but, she recognizes herself in some
This book begins by retelling an incident where the author hallucinated bed bugs in her apartment; at first glance her fears seemed reasonable. Cahalan describes how she became obsessed with the possible bed bugs in her home then all over her body. The bed bugs were blown out of proportion to the point where Cahalan felt the need to scour her home and throw away many of her treasured items. I related to Cahalan at this point in her story because at stressful times I reorganized areas around me to feel in control of my life. Cahalan’s peers wondered why she was making such a big deal out of the situation but she felt as though no one was listening or understanding her.
The language used in …show more content…
Cahalan discusses why discovering the name of illness was so important to her, she felt alone and misunderstood in her personal fight. With the name of the disease Cahalan finally had something to validate her personal dilemmas.
Dr. Najjar started an aggressive treatment plan to hopefully reverse the effects of the disease. Cahalan created a baseline to grow from by doing simple tasks like drawing a clock and writing in a daily journal. In the book there is a recreation of the clock she drew while ill and the reader gets the chance to visualize how strenuous and gruesome her disease was. Cahalan also provides images of her journal entries while staying at the hospital, the reader can see how some entries are crossed out because Cahalan changed her mind and felt different.
Eventually Cahalan is allowed to return home and she feels the responsibility to piece together the month of time she lost while in the hospital. Cahalan takes advantage of her peers, journal entries, hospital video and various interviews to try to recall her past. Cahalan makes it clear that she felt completely out of herself while she was sick, but, she recognizes herself in some