Post #6 Book 3 Listicle

Five Reasons Why Susannah is a Very Strong Woman

When you pick up Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan, you have no idea what you are about to dive into. It starts off with “Maybe it all began with a bug bite, from a bedbug that didn’t exist” (3). At this point I was thinking what that what am I about to spend my time reading? That is until we really got to meet Susannah. By the end of the book you see how strong of a woman Susannah Cahalan is.

1.     Susannah had this amazing job at The Post Newspaper and she was doing pretty well. Then one day she had a meeting that she was completely unprepared for, so she was just going to wing it. “’That’s really just not good enough,’ Steve interrupted. ‘You need to be bringing in better stuff than this. Okay? Please don’t come in with nothing again.’ Paul nodded, his face blazing red. For the first time since I’d started working on my high school newspaper, journalism disagreed with me. I left the meeting furious at myself and bewildered by my own ineptitude” (6). After this meeting she was going to never walk into a meeting unprepared again, but that didn’t happen. There was something going on inside, medically maybe even emotionally? Who knows?  

2.     Susannah was going through something and wouldn’t tell anyone. “Moments later, the migraine returned, as did the nausea. It was then that I first noticed my left hand felt funny, like an extreme case of pins and needles” (12). That was the first sign of something not right inside. That event was just foreshadowing when Susannah would have a seizure in front of her boyfriend. “I was gasping for air. My body continued to stiffen as I inhaled repeatedly, with no exhale. Blood and foam began to spurt out of my mouth through clenched teeth. Terrified, Stephen stifled a panicked cry and for a second he stared, frozen, at my shaking body” (40). This was the start of a very long month of being in the hospital and having tests done to find out what was wrong inside.

3.     Being in the hospital for Susannah was very rough. “Two escape attempts earned me a one-to-one guard; now, after the third attempt in as many days, one nurse casually suggested to my father that if I kept dislocating the wires and trying to escape, I wouldn’t be allowed to stay” (91). Susannah worked hard and tried to the best of her ability not to rebel. And she got moved to another floor and got into a “normal” routine. “By now, my family had developed a routine. Now that I was again comfortable in his presence, my father would arrive in the morning, feed me a breakfast yogurt and cappuccino, and play a few games of cards that I was often too disoriented to follow” (100). 

4.     It then came time for Susannah to meet another doctor, Dr. Najjar, he had a really good reputation so they had high intentions of figuring out what was wrong. Dr. Najjar came into the room and did series of little “field” tests, then he thought clock test. And at the end Najjar and the family finally got some results. “Dr. Najjar, beaming, grabbed the paper, showed it to my parents, and explained what this meant. They gasped with a combination of terror and hope. This was finally the clue that everyone was searching for. It didn’t involve machinery or invasive tests; it required only paper and pen. It had given Dr. Najjar concrete evidence that the right hemisphere of my brain was inflamed” (131).

5.     Once everything was figured out, Susannah was able to go home and receive treatment from her house. Susannah considered this part her partial return. “A nurse would arrive midmornings to hook up my IV to the bags of immunoglobulin over three to four hours. Between July and December, I had twelve infusions” (210). Now after her partial return she is going to work and having a social life again. “I recall agreeing obediently as Human Resources suggested that they would start me off slowly at first, part time for only a few days a week. Instead I jumped right back in as if I had never been gone” (214).

In conclusion, after Susannah had a very rough month, she wasn’t going to give up on getting answers. She needed to know what was wrong, so she could get back to her normal lifestyle. Then once she got an answer she jumped back into her job with both feet and she also continued her relationships she had, had before being sick.