5/28/2023 0 Comments Cahalan susannahBy the second week in the hospital, I could no longer write my own name, couldn’t walk on my own, and barely could utter full sentences. Their working diagnosis was schizoaffective disorder. After grand mal seizures and a delusional breakdown at my father’s house, I was finally hospitalized. Weeks later I became manic and psychotic. I was lethargic, depressed, unmotivated - and completely obsessed by the notion that bed bugs had invaded my apartment. My initial symptoms emerged a few months before my hospitalization. I remember bracing myself as I tried to anticipate what it would be like to say such intimate and impossible things to millions of people. I didn’t remember my mom’s wavering voice as she spoke about my seizure or my dad breaking down as he read from his diaries about me. I remember the bright lights of the studio and stifling the urge to laugh when I heard my name on the prerecorded segment about “one woman’s month of madness.” There was the grainy hospital footage of a woman - of me, I remind myself - hallucinating, calling out for help: “I’m on the TV.” I remember a flash of self-conscious clarity when I noticed my failed attempt to curl my hair for the interview. Even today, looking back, I can still feel the prickly sensation akin to dread located in the pit of my stomach. It was January 2010, a few weeks before my 25th birthday. I appeared on TODAY 10 months after I learned how to speak again.
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