Imagine waking up in a hospital bed one day, strapped down in a straight jacket not knowing how exactly you got there in the first place. This real and scary event occurred to one New York Post journalist Susannah Cahalan. In her book “Brain on Fire: My Month of Madnes,” Cahalan dives into how she went from being a successful reporter to being a patient in a critical care unit at the New York University Hospital.

Cahalan was in her early 20’s and moved to New York City to become a successful reporter. Everything was right at the tip of her fingers. She had a great job, a loyal boyfriend and lived in the city.

After a reported bug infestation in apartments of New York, though, Cahalan woke up with two bite marks on her arm.

Her precautions of these bites on her arm began to enhance once she started waking up with extreme headaches and her vision began to blur. She started to lash out at co-workers and began to lose herself in her own body. This rare and terrifying disease that Cahalan began to develop frightened her loved ones and everyone around her. Her sense of time and place completely diminished. Most alarming, though, was her loss of judgment over what was fiction and what was reality.

Just a few weeks back she was roaming around New York City covering the latest stories and interviewing starlets. Though she was not aware of it at the time, she had become a victim of her own body. It had turned against her and made her a completely different person. Some say it was stress from her job while others claimed it was because of the amount of alcohol she consumed. Despite the speculation, no one was really sure what went wrong.

This mysterious and frightening novel takes one on a journey through this illness that is real. Cahalan wrote this novel after her illness to tell everyone her story. Though many people are unaware of it, this illness that she obtained is more common than people are led to believe. Not only is this novel filled with suspense as well as hope and useful information. It will leave the reader informed with the truth that many doctors and other individuals are leaving unsaid.