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Autoimmune disease
Mental health recovery long term studies
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Recommended: Autoimmune disease
The book Brain on Fire is a captivating and compelling story about a young woman with a debilitating autoimmune disorder, anti-N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor encephalitis (Anti-NMDAR encephalitis). The young woman, Susannah Cahalan, experiences many bumps and turns with her disease, and this makes for a very thrilling tale. When I first picked up the book, I assumed it was a memoir or journal from a person (Susannah Cahalan) with a mental illness, and how she dealt with it, along with her time in a mental institution. This book, I that thought was going to be generic, was not the dull book that I assumed I was assigned to read. However, I was happily wrong, and I was barely able to set the book down and not read ahead. The chilling medical mystery, …show more content…
However, instead of spending their time stressed and afraid, her parents, Tom Cahalan and Rhona Nack, and her boyfriend, Stephen, tried to stay strong by Susannah’s side, as well as tried to stay positive. Throughout the book, Susannah’s father says their motto, “What’s the slope of the line?” to keep Susannah optimistic about her recovery, even when her cognitive ablility is so deteriorated that she doesn’t know what it means. This is also slightly self-assuring for her father and their family, so they can also stay positive and hopeful. If I were her parents, put into this situation, I don’t think that I would have done anything differently. Her parents knew that something was wrong with and admitted her to the hospital, even when doctors told them that she was healthy. However, they knew that they couldn’t do much besides support Susannah, because treatment and diagnosis were out of their hands, so they tried to do all they could and stayed by her side until she was back to …show more content…
When Suzannah had her first seizure, to me it felt as if her illness had really started there. Her seizure was one of the first large symptoms she had, and that was significant to me. If there was one thing that I felt was the highlight of Brain on Fire, it was when Dr. Najjar diagnosed Susannah with some form of encephalitis. When she drew a clock, all of the numbers were on the right side, and Dr. Najjar knew from that that the right side of Susannah’s brain was inflamed. I thought it was amazing and slightly ironic that he was able to do that with just a pen and paper, whereas many other doctors tried (and failed) to diagnose her with fancy machinery and tests. On the other hand, It was difficult for me to believe that no other doctor had thought to do this beforehand, because it was such a simple test to perform. However, this is still one of my favorite parts of this memoir. The final instance that impacted me was when Susannah returned to the hospital to see the “purple lady”. Quite frankly, it was amazing that she was able to return to the hospital where her brain was on fire, completely sane and almost as healthy as she was
Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness is a memoir by Susannah Cahalan, intended to narrate her story as she fights for both her sanity and her life. The memoir details her frequent hospital stays and is ripe with personal accounts and memories from those who were there with Cahalan through her agonizing month of insanity.
Everything is criticized at every level in this story, the people by the main character, the main character by the author and even the story by the author as well. The cruel egoistic personality of Anders is definitely identifiable through these different levels of criticism. I will prove that the inner motivation of this behaviour derives from Anders' egoistic personality which sometimes makes him cruel against others, sometimes against himself. Furthermore, I will prove that whenever Anders criticizes somebody or something he actually tries to punish because of the imperfectness of the object. In order to make the referring to the different part of the story easier I divide it into three parts. The first part ends when the robbers appear at the door of the bank, the second ends when one of the robbers shoots at Anders and the left is the third part.
In 1978, Susan Sheehan took an interest in Sylvia Frumkin, a schizophrenic who spent most of her life in and out of mental hospitals. For more than two years, Sheehan followed Sylvia around, observing when Sylvia talked to herself, sitting in on sessions with Sylvia’s doctors, and at times, sleeping in the same bed as Sylvia during her stay at the psychiatric centers. Through Sheehan’s intensive report on Sylvia’s life, readers are able to obtain useful information on what it’s like to live with this disorder, how impairing it can be for them, and the symptoms and causes to look out for; likewise, readers can get an inside look of how some mental hospitals are run and how a misdiagnosis can negatively impact someone’s life.
After Sarah escapes the unsanitary camp with Rachel, the two run until they find a place of beauty. “In the late afternoon, they came to a forest, a long, cool stretch of green leafiness. It smelled sweet and humid….a mysterious emerald world dappled with golden sunlight….The water felt wonderful to her skin, a soothing, velvety caress. She wet her shaved head, where the hair had started to grow back, a golden fuzz” (Rosnay 99). This description places images in the mind of the reader that allow for the reader to experience this moment in the forest with Sarah. Vivid descriptions of places and events are more common within Sarah’s story, as she is experiencing the horrors of the war, allowing the reader to visualize the tragedy through the descriptions in a book. Soon after the arrest, Sarah and her family are thrown into the Velodrome d’hiver with other Jews, where a woman jumps from “the highest railing” with her child in hand: “From where the girl sat, she could see the dislocated body of the woman, the bloody skull of the child, sliced open like a ripe tomato” (Rosnay 33). This description captures the horrifying sight Sarah has just witnessed, darkening the mood and tone of the book alike to the depressing events that occurred within the
One does need a full knowledge of the slave trade and slavery to know that those coming from the continent of Africa and those born into slavery suffered various forms of psychological rewiring, some positive but most negatively. Yet, it is scarcely asked what the mental state of the White population was. There is this generalized notion of acceptance, however, there must have been ‘something' felt by this ethnicity, or at least by some. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relations between races, specifically the racial attitudes in 18th century Portugal and Brazil. To do so, we will be using Robert Edgar Conrad’s, Children of God’s Fire: A documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil, primary source, Section 5.1, focusing
The Gift of Sweat” by Rebecca Brown, tells the story of a man with a mysterious disease. The story is told from what we presume is one of the man’s friends. We read about her routine with Rick, the man that is ill, and his happenings. This story is intriguing because it is very poignant and mysterious. This makes us wonder about this character's lives and why the outcome of the story is what it ended up to be.. What makes this story so pleasurable is the writing style. The way the author made us predict what Rick’s illness was, made the story that much more interesting. The way Brown played with context clues made the readers interested, it made the readers want more and figure out more about the characters, and the story itself.
In the chapter “Attention Deficit: The Brain Syndrome of Our Era,” from The New Brain, written by Richard Restak, Restak makes some very good points on his view of multitasking and modern technology. He argues that multitasking is very inefficient and that our modern technology is making our minds weaker. Multitasking and modern technology is causing people to care too much what other people think of them, to not be able to focus on one topic, and to not be able to think for themselves.
Her essay is arranged in such a way that her audience can understand her life - the positives and the negatives. She allows her audience to see both sides of her life, both the harsh realities that she must suffer as well as her average day-to-day life. According to Nancy, multiple sclerosis “...has opened and enriched my life enormously. This sense that my fragility and need must be mirrored in others, that in search for and shaping a stable core in a life wrenched by change and loss, change and loss, I must recognize the same process, under individual conditions, in the lives around me. I do not deprecate such knowledge” (Mairs, 37). Mairs big claim is that she has accepted herself and her condition for what is it, yet she refuses to allow her condition to define her. Through her particular diction, tone, satire, and rhetorical elements, Mairs paints a picture of her life and shows how being a cripple has not prevent her from living her life. She is not embarrassed nor ashamed of what she is, and accepts her condition by making the most of it and wearing the title with
The novel ‘Burning Eddy’ is about a young man named Daniel who has had a rough life so far, along the way he meets an old Dutch lady named Eddy who changed his life forever. Throughout the novel, Daniel is faced with problems that will change his identity and the way he looks at life.
Every parent desires to have a child who will be successful in life. In “Brainology” author, Carol Dweck explains that there are consequences for praising children for their work. Dweck also explains that there are different types of mindsets that enable an individual’s development. She claims that there are two types of mindsets that people have. In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work ( Dweck 1). Furthermore growth mindset individuals love learning and are resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. (Dweck 1). One more theory, Dweck mentioned was fixed mindset. The author states “In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence
...s course because it helps to increase awareness and sensitivity to those with disorders and diseases. The book helps the reader better understand the challenges such individuals have to overcome. In addition, Fox’s humorous nature presents challenges brought on by his disease at a unique angle so the reader can see both the demanding affects it brings and the many opportunities that are available to affected individuals.
Nell Bernstein, the author of Burning Down The House: The End Of Juvenile Prison has a very strong opinion about juvenile facilities. He believes that children do not learn to correct their behavior by being forced into these facilities because the main root of their behavior stems from their “broken” family structures, in more cases than not. This is supported from the text when he states “In fact multiple studies have shown that putting youth behind bars not only fails to enhance public safety; it does just the opposite, driving low-level delinquents deeper into criminality and increasing the likelihood that they will end up behind bars again and again.” Bernstein really tries to push his audience to agree with his opinion; to stop putting
In Carol Dweck’s “Brainology” the article explains how our brain is always being altered by our experiences and knowledge during our lifespan. For this Dweck conducted a research in what students believe about their own brain and their thoughts in their intelligence. They were questioned, if intelligence was something fixed or if it could grow and change; and how this affected their motivation, learning, and academic achievements. The response to it came with different points of views, beliefs, or mindset in which created different behavior and learning tendencies. These two mindsets are call fixed and growth mindsets. In a fixed mindset, the individual believes that intelligence is something already obtain and that is it. They worry if they
One of the main causes for her insanity is the treatment she is receiving by her husband. Right when the story begins the narrator moves into a home with her husband and new born child to stay for a few
James Baldwin was an influential activist in the Civil Rights Movement and also became know as one of the most prominent African American intellectuals of twenty centuries. Between Martin Luther King Jr non-violent views on integration and Malcom X radical views, there in middle lies James Baldwin ideals a mix of the two. In his book The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin analyses the position of blacks in America a century after the Emancipation Proclamation which supposedly gave blacks their freedom. He uses the essay “My Dungeon Shook” as a plea to his nephew the importance of acceptance and integration. Through the essay “Down At The Cross” to provides readers with personal experiences about the relationship between religion and race that allowed