All of us in the Autoimmune Encephalitis community owe Ms. Cahalana debt or gratitude for using her talents as a writer to tell her story of when, at 24 years old she descended into madness due to anti-NMDAr encephalitis. 

The book, Brain on Fire : My Month of Madnesshas been responsible for spreading awareness of these disorders throughout the medical community and general public world wide.  Those of us who have AE or are in recovery from it, know the bravery it took to investigate what she could not remember of her experience and to re-live the horror.  Susannah’s bravery in opening the doors to memories so many of us keep shut because of the trauma we went through, has lead to countless lives being saved through an accurate diagnosis, including my own. 

This  morning, on the Today Show, Susannah recounts her story. The video is 10:43 minutes long and one we highly recommend you watch and share with friends and family. 

 Click to view interview

The second interview on the July 5th broadcast was that  Eileen Tchao.  How the hit book and movie,  ‘Brain on Fire’ helped her become correctly diagnosed. At age 18, Eileen Tchao was in a coma for six weeks with symptoms that appeared to be from psychosis before she was diagnosed with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, a rare autoimmune disease. Her father, Dr. Paul Tchao, helped diagnose Eileen when he stumbled upon journalist Susannah Cahalan’s book, “Brain on Fire,” which details anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis. Eileen and her father join Megyn Kelly TODAY to describe their journey.

 click to view interview