Normally Sharp, He Was Chronically Confused. What Was Going On?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/magazine/autoimmune-limbic-encephalitis.html
Credit...Photo illustration by Ina Jang
Jan. 12, 2021
The woman rushed to her 58-year-old brother’s room when the shouting started. She found him lying in his bed, screaming, his entire body thrashing. He’d been acting strange for a few months, but she had never seen anything like this, and it scared her. She picked up the phone and called 911.
Her brother had started seeing a psychiatrist, Dr. Douglas Berv, a few months earlier; he worried that he might be going a little crazy. Initially, Berv wasn’t sure what to think. The patient seemed tidy and organized. He had a full-time job that he enjoyed. And yet he described periods of confusion. That wasn’t normal for him, he explained at their first meeting. He had always been a sharp guy, and yet just the night before he got lost driving home from work. He came to an intersection he knew well — he’d driven the same route every day for years — but somehow he couldn’t remember if he was supposed to turn right or left.