Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness

Susannah is admitted ten days after her first blackout seizure. She's placed in the advanced monitoring unit, which is technically for patients with severe epilepsy who need constant monitoring but sometimes takes patients when there's no room elsewhere. A nurse sits in the four-person room 24 hours per day, and two cameras hang above each bed. This provides video evidence of seizures for the hospital, and Susannah tells the reader that these videos were essential when she reconstructed her time in the hospital.

When Susannah is settled in the room, a nurse takes her health history. Susannah can answer most of the questions, and Mom fills in what she can't. After a few hours, an EEG technician arrives and begins to place electrodes on Susannah's head. Susannah stops cooperating and fights the technician, but finally just cries. When the technician is finished, he hands Susannah a pink backpack with the EEG box so she can remain connected but be mobile.

Susannah's difficult nature worsens. When Allen and Dad arrive, she yells at them and insists the nurses ban them from her room. She accuses Dad of being an imposter. Later that evening, a neurologist notes that Susannah is experiencing mood swings and can't stay on topic. Susannah tells the neurologist that Dad is turning into different people to trick her, and the neurologist prescribes an anti-psychotic drug. Susannah explains to the reader that her paranoid hallucinations and her belief that Dad was turning into other people is called Capgras syndrome, which doctors believe is caused by neurobiological issues such as brain lesions.

Susannah describes an EEG video in which she lies in bed in the fetal position looking upset, fiddles with her EEG cap, and grabs her phone. She then describes a hallucination. Susannah goes to the restroom but as she pulls her leggings down, she notices an eye watching her through a slit in the door. She yells, pulls her leggings back up, and returns to bed. Susannah calls Mom and quietly tells her what happened. Mom sounds frenzied, but Susannah hangs up when she hears a nurse approaching. The nurse asks Susannah to not use her phone with the EEG equipment, says that she saw Susannah on the news, and asks why she doesn't let Dad into the room. Susannah starts pulling the EEG electrodes off her scalp and tries to escape the hospital.