We are, in the end, a sum of our parts, and when the body fails, all the virtues we hold dear go with it.
Susannah CahalanSometimes, Just when we need them, life wraps metaphors up in little bows for us. When you think all is lost, the things you need the most return unexpectedly.
Susannah CahalanIn the spring of 2009, I was the 217th person ever to be diagnosed with anti-NMDA-receptor autoimmune encephalitis. Just a year later, that figure had doubled. Now the number is in the thousands. Yet Dr. Bailey, considered one of the best neurologists in the country, had never heard of it. When we live in a time when the rate of misdiagnoses has shown no improvement since the 1930s, the lesson here is that it’s important to always get a second opinion.
While he may be an excellent doctor in many respects, Dr. Bailey is also, in some ways, a perfect example of what is wrong with medicine. I was just a number to him (and if he saw thirty-five patients a day, as he told me, that means I was one of a very large number). He is a by-product of a defective system that forces neurologists to spend five minutes with X number of patients a day to maintain their bottom line. It’s a bad system. Dr. Bailey is not the exception to the rule. He is the rule.
Tag: medicine illness doctor schizophrenia diagnosis auto-immune
On April 2, the nurses started my first round of five intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) infusions. The clear IV bags hung on a metal pole above my head, their liquid trickling down into my vein. Each of those ordinary-looking bags contained the healthy antibodies of over a thousand blood donors and cost upwards of $20,000 per infusion. One thousand tourniquets, one thousand nurses, one thousand veins, one thousand blood-sugar regulating cookies, all just to help one patient.
Susannah CahalanYou have to look backward to see the future,” he often said to his residents.
--- stated by Dr Najjar. So true in many settings
I had asked him many times why he stayed, and he always said the same thing: “Because I love you, and I wanted to, and I knew you were in there.” No matter how damaged I had been, he had loved me enough to still see me somewhere inside.
Susannah CahalanTag: true-love
When the brain is working to remember something, similar patterns of neurons fire as they did during the perception of the original event. These networks are linked, and each time we revisit them, they become stronger and more associated. But they need the proper retrieval cues--words, smells, images-- for them to be brought back as memories
Susannah CahalanThe mind is like a circuit of
Christmas tree lights. When the
brain works well, all of the lights
twinkle brilliantly, and it’s adaptable
enough that, often, even if one bulb
goes out, the rest will still shine on.
But depending on where the
damage is, sometimes that one
blown bulb can make the whole
strand go dark.
Tag: psychology christmas brain
To move foward, you have to leave the past behind
Susannah CahalanTag: life moving-forward leaving-the-past
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