Loyalty And Abandonment In The Book 'Brain On Fire: My Month Of Madness'

Loyalty and Abandonment: How doctors affected Susannah's life
The book "Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness" by Susannah Calahan is a narrative telling the life changing story of an unimaginable descent into madness, and the genius, lifesaving diagnosis that almost didn't happen. Previously healthy Susannah never would have imagined waking up in the hospital one day with no recollection of her battle with a disease that not only threatened her sanity but also her life. A team of doctors spent a month trying to pin down a medical explanation of what exactly what had gone wrong. During this time, we learn more about Susannah's family, friends, and loved ones and how each of them affect her overall wellbeing. Eventually, with the help of one special

Najjar came in with a completely different mindset then the rest of the doctors. He grew up in a small town in Syria and did very poor in the private school classroom environment (Calahan 128). No one believed in him, and even his parents lost all hope in him achieving success. They decided to have him transfer into a public school. This opened up a new mindset for Dr. Najjar and lit a spark inside of him. At his new school, a specific teacher caught interest in him and praised him for his work which raised his confidence. Dr. Najjar easily could have taken this confidence and stopped putting forth the effort needed to continue succeeding, but instead, he stayed persistent, and at the end of the school year, he came home with straight A's on his report card. His parents didn’t think this was possible and accused him of cheating. His teachers backed him up and assured his parents that he worked hard to earn his good grades. As time went on, his success continued and Najjar eventually graduated at the top of his class in medical school. He then moved to the United States where he became an esteemed neurologist and epileptologist. No one believed in Dr. Najjar growing up, so he wanted to prove a point to everyone who doubted him and he made it clear he was never going to give up on

Najjar came into Susannah's journey and saved her life. It was difficult for him to believe that she was psychotic or just accept the fact that it was purely a mental disorder like all the other doctors were saying. He saw something different in her, something that he had never seen before. He saw a cure. He came in following doctors who had made no progress on her diagnosis. After trying several physical and mental tests on Susannah, he handed her a pencil and a piece of paper and asked her to draw a clock. When he looked at the drawing, he was completely taken back in that she squeezed all the numbers from one to twelve only on the right side of the clock face (Calahan 131). She left the left side of the clock face totally empty. She neglects everything on the left side of the hemisphere, which is usually the function of the right side of the brain. It correlated with what her parents told him early on before she was sick. A brain biopsy confirmed Dr. Najjar's idea: There was inflammation on the right side of Susannah's brain (Calahan 132). Susannah wrote, "This was finally the clue that everyone was searching for. It didn’t involve fancy machinery or invasive tests; it required only paper and pen" (Calahan 132). He diagnosed her with autoimmune encephalitis, a rare, but easily treatable disorder, which can include psychiatric symptoms. Dr. Najjar calls Susannah's parents outside the room and tells them "Her brain is on fire" (Calahan 134). After explaining to them