Amnesia
To wake up without memory is truly a chaotic experience, especially in severe cases of amnesia. Without memory, one could have to relearn facts and skills, people, associations, events, language and coordination skills—any number of challenges is possible with memory loss cases, as this book proves. The drama of having to go on existing without any knowledge of the past or of one's own nature or circumstance is an experience of reality that verges on absolute absurdity. Perhaps the real irony is not the malfunctioning of memory, but in the daily experience of mind we tend to take for granted.
Brain and mind
As noted above, it is typically for one to take for granted their experience of mind as an autonomous experience of consciousness, but then when serious injury or illness affects the brain's function, that ironic veil is removed in full drama. The mind is at least in part a production of the brain, and many believe that the mind is solely an experience of the brain, so ironically, the mind is incredibly liable to injury or illness, because it is just flesh. As Cahalan can attest, sometimes flesh does funny things, and when the organ in question is the brain, the effects can be nearly spiritualistic; in her fugue states, she behaved in ways that were simply astonishing to those around her. Her grasp of reality gave way to states of insanity.
The fateful age
The age of this story's inception is an interestingly ironic note in this story. One is typically ready only to discuss cases where someone's brain is changing because of old age, which is probably the most common form of illnesses of this kind, like Alzheimer's disease for example. But in this case, the hand of fate bears down heavily on Cahalan; she was only twenty-four, having the time of her life, pursuing her interests with great success, with a successful private life, and then suddenly, that normal life became the backdrop for a dramatic unfolding of events that she could not have predicted.
Autoimmune issues and irony
Brain on Fire invites the reader to consider autoimmune illnesses. The irony of those illnesses is that the body is not suffering a foreign invasion or something, but instead, hyper-defensive measures are leading to medical imbalances in the body. This happens in a number of ways, but for Susannnah Cahalan, this meant that her body overly-addressed some ambiguous threat in the brain at the expense of the brain's functioning. The illness requires serious medical intervention, but with the right medication, Cahalan's immune system is made more stable and her brain begins to improve.
Heroism as survival
Cahalan is a hero because she went through a road of severe trials, namely the trials of remaining sane as her brain's biological material slowly fell to autoimmune attacks, and then survived with the help of her community, now using that story as a harrowing tale of survival and hope. To those whose brains are also malfunctioning or those with memory issues or issues pertaining to sanity and grasping reality in a socially acceptable way, Cahalan's legacy is one of survival and healing. The irony of that is that Cahalan did not have to choose anything except her attitude; otherwise, her heroism boils down to pure survivalism. By not dying, she is made into a natural symbol of hope.
