Unconvinced, she uses her journalism skills to researches her symptoms. Her boyfriend rushes her to the emergency room, where doctors test her and send her home with antiseizure meds and a recommendation to stop drinking. Just when you’d think Cahalan’s behavior stems from a mental illness, she has an intense seizure. People begin to wonder if she’s drinking too much or on drugs certainly, she looks hungover. Her editor, once impressed with her stories, finds her recent assignments to be unreadable. "Brain on Fire" portrays Cahalan's erratic behavior, from hallucinating bug bites on her arm to inappropriately bursting out into laughter during an interview. When NMDA receptors are damaged, judgment, memory, personal interaction, perception and autonomic functions like swallowing and breathing become compromised. The disease occurs when the body’s immune system attacks NMDA receptors, or proteins, which control electrical impulses in the brain. However, the 95-minute movie depicting Cahalan’s month-long demise is very engrossing.Īfter all, how many stories show doctors diagnosing someone with a psychiatric disorder like schizophrenia, when, in reality, the patient is dying from a rare neurological disease?īefore Cahalan’s book,“ Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness,” came out in 2012, hardly anyone had heard of anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis. At times, watching actress Chloë Grace Moretz rub her temples with bewildered eyes can be a bit repetitive.
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