Cahalan emphasizes that her worries about her health were largely ignored by the many doctors she visited. One even believed that Cahalan was “partying too hard, not sleeping enough and working too hard”, telling Cahalan’s mother “everything should be fine” once medication was started. Cahalan’s illness taught her “how lucky [she was]. Right time, right place”. This hint of Cahalan’s privilege proved effective in keeping her from being sent to a mental hospital and this theme reoccurs throughout her memoir. Cahalan acknowledges that if she did not possess the privilege she did that she might not have been treated as well as she was or even have received the care she did. Perhaps it was largely this privilege that spurred Cahalan’s doctors to keep her in a general hospital. If Cahalan would have been transferred to a mental facility, her symptoms would have immediately been viewed as a mental illness. Cahalan asserts that in the past, many people that were suffering from anti-NMDA-receptor autoimmune encephalitis were left undiagnosed or wrongly diagnosed as having a mental illness. As Cahalan discovered, “some doctors…believe that [anti-NMDA-receptor autoimmune encephalitis] has been around at least as long as humanity has” and that has huge implications on the way that we handle all mental illness. Mental illness has no definitive testing that can be done to prove its existence. Cahalan’s counter narrative shines a light on this absence of testing and raises questions about the treatment of people we perceive as having a mental illness. 
In their “Beyond the counter-narrative”, Alexandra L. Adame and Roger M. Knudson note that “recovery [of mental illness] was described in terms of an ongoing process rather than a static goal or endpoint to be reached”. This mirrors Cahalan’s assertion that she “had a long way to go before returning to the person [she] once was”. Adame and Knudson assert that many survivors say that “the passage of time, patience, and a trusted companion on the journey of healing” are greatly helpful to the recovery from mental illness. Again, this is something that is an integral part of Cahalan’s life after illness. She believes that as part of the imitation of mental illness that she suffered from, she misplaced many memories but that they can be recovered by time, patience and through the help of her friends and family. Adame and Knudson also believe that the recovery process is much like the “mourning process” that one experiences due to a death or personal tragedy and this is evident in Cahalan’s memoir. Cahalan has set her memoir in three parts, much like she views her life, as being split into a before, during, and after Susannah. This structure subconsciously draws the reader to digest the illness and cure before they fully understand the connection between the medical profession and mental illness. 
 Though her illness was not by nature a mental illness, both the illness and recovery so closely resembled mental illness that comparisons are able to be made between the two. Conversely, the diagnosis of anti-NMDA-receptor autoimmune encephalitis allows Cahalan to step back and use those comparisons to create the perfect counter narrative to mental illness. This counter narrative is bolstered by Cahalan’s journalistic talent and professional reputation. The comparison that Cahalan is able to make exposes the lack of testing to diagnose mental illness and the dangerous misdiagnosis of a physical illness as a mental illness. The counter narrative she provides uncovers the danger that those misdiagnoses can pose to people of less privilege who might find themselves in a mental facility rather than a general hospital. Cahalan’s memoir is structured in such a way that it is an effective way of challenging the narrative of mental illness that has already been set into place. It is Cahalan using her journalistic voice that has furthered research into anti-NMDA-receptor autoimmune encephalitis and has encouraged her doctors to push for definitive testing to properly diagnose mental illness. 
