Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan

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I began reading this book yesterday, partly the reason for the lack of blog post. The novel is a self-written case-study of Susannah Cahalan's "month of madness" in which she succumbs to an illness unknown by many healthcare professionals. Fortunately for Cahalan, a doctor on her team of practitioners was familiar with a contemporary study that identified the cause of a certain set of symptoms in young women.

Cahalan describes her symptoms as she lived through them. Although she does not remember much about her experience in total, she combines snippets of memories with extensive research into her case. She relies on several friends, family members, and healthcare providers' recollections and documents recorded during her period of illness to fill in the gaps. The result is a tale of determined young woman battling an illness that nearly claimed her life.

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As much as I want to go into details about the novel, I will leave it up to the discretion of the reader. It can be heartbreaking and hard at times to read, but it is well worth the time spent on it. I will, however, discuss a detail Cahalan writes about her neurologist. In discussing her case with the neurologist, he states he is unfamiliar with her diagnosis - despite it being publicized nearly everywhere in the media and in various journals of medicine for the last few months.

It is a fact that medicine is constantly evolving. Healthcare practitioners are (and rightly so) expected to follow the latest developments in medicine. Not only should healthcare providers be up-to-date with contemporary practices, they should understand them as well. Without understanding the developments, healthcare practitioners increase the risk of misdiagnosing their patients and decrease the level of care they provide.

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Although healthcare practitioners are required to continue their education, the most valuable practitioners will be the ones who actively seek to learn despite the various time and energy constraints all healthcare practitioners face. Ultimately, the importance of a doctor lies in their knowledge of medicine and humanity than their academic achievements.