47 pages • 1 hour read
Susannah CahalanBrain On Fire
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 42-45Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 42 Summary
Cahalan is forced to move from her apartment. Her lucky ring is amidst the mail piled up: “[Cahalan] found a manila envelope sent from the office where [she] had gotten [her] first MRI, before [she] was admitted to the hospital in March. Inside, there was [Cahalan’s] long-lost gold hematite ring. [Her] lucky ring” (206).
She becomes more focused on her physical recovery instead of her cognitive recovery because for her, the cognitive damage is too horrifying to face. Her body is awkward from growing accustomed to eating food again and because of the side effects of the drugs she must take. She begins a spin class, reads old journals, and endures to understand herself.
Chapter 43 Summary
Cahalan shows progress in the quality of her writing, in the demonstration of her humor, and the rejuvenation of her personality. She is able to tell others about her illness and begins to research. The results are frightening, which makes her grateful for her luck and timing. No one knows the cause of NDMA-receptor autoimmune encephalitis, nor why certain people have it. Some recover, some die, and some must face long-term treatment.
Chapter 44 Summary
Cahalan takes bigger steps to reintegrate into her profession as a journalist. She gets an assignment with The New York Post and all goes well. She makes short visits to her office which sometimes go well and sometimes go awry because she is not yet recovered. To many officemates, she is almost unrecognizable, though they can see at least a portion of the old her inside.
Chapter 45 Summary
At this point, Cahalan is fully released from care and treatment. Her doctors give the ok that she is well. This recovery period has spanned almost three years. She still lives with self-doubt and fear. After managing an unplanned encounter with an ex-boyfriend after a salon treatment, Cahalan finally admits to herself that she feels “back.”
Chapters 42-45 Analysis
This section speaks to a different stage of Cahalan’s recovery: the social recovery of Cahalan’s identity. She has had to relearn so many tasks, including how to be appropriately social. Eager to prove she is well to herself and to her colleagues, rather than take it easy, Cahalan jumps into the deep end, as described when she writes, “Human Resources suggested that they would start me off slowly at first, part time for only a few days a week. Instead I jumped right back in as if I had never been gone” (214).
It’s telling that Cahalan begins this section about her recovery with the discovery of her lucky ring. The ring completes a cycle here as a symbol of her old self: It first disappears at the beginning of her lapse into illness, psychosis, and seizures, and it reappears just as she commits herself to her physical recovery. In contrast to the last section, Cahalan returns to the doctor for treatment and a checkup and begins devoting herself to recovery instead of hiding herself in despair and depression. While she doesn’t fully look her loss of mental acuity in the eye, she’s able to come to terms with who she is now in comparison to who she was before. She “jumps in” at her old job, showing that she’s still hoping to achieve some of what she lost.
