![]() ![]() Dalmau had been the senior author on a paper in the neuroscience journal Annals of Neurology that focused on four young women who had developed prominent psychiatric symptoms and encephalitis. ![]() Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc., N.Y.įour years earlier, in 2005, Dr. In this excerpt Cahalan tells the story of how University of Pennsylvania neuro-oncologist Josep Dalmau first identified the disorder.Įxcerpt from BRAIN ON FIRE, by Susannah Cahalan. She ended up at New York University's Langone Medical Center, where a team of doctors, led by neurologist Souhel Najjar, diagnosed her with a disease that had been discovered only two years earlier: NMDA-receptor autoimmune encephalitis. Initially diagnosed with mononucleosis, Cahalan continued to grow worse, eventually suffering a series of near-fatal seizures, psychosis, and a gradual loss of brain function. ![]() Her left hand went numb, paranoid thoughts obsessed her mind, and migraines and stomachaches beset her body. In 2009 Susannah Cahalan was a healthy 24-year-old reporter at the New York Post, one of the country's oldest newspapers, when she suddenly developed a range of worrying symptoms. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |