My battle with Anti-NMDAR encephalitis began in late June 2023, when I was 29. My memories from that time are blurry, something many people with this diagnosis can relate to.

It started at work. I was unusually anxious about a presentation and hadn’t slept for nearly 48 hours. As the anxiety escalated over the next few days, I stopped going to work and decided I needed medical help. At a local clinic, I remember sitting in the waiting room, feeling agitated and unable to explain what was happening, like I was trapped inside my own mind. The doctor prescribed anxiety medication and told me to take it as needed.

A couple days later, while I was away at my family’s cabin, the insomnia continued. I was talking nonsense, increasingly agitated, and had run out of the medication. My fiancé and I went to a small local hospital, where they suggested more medication and rest. That is where my memories stop. Everything that follows was shared with me later by my family.

That night, my symptoms worsened. The next morning my fiancé, realizing something was seriously wrong, drove me to a larger hospital a couple of hours away. Once again, I was turned away and told to rest. Thankfully, my sister lived nearby, so we stayed at her home. But instead of sleeping, I woke my family with manic behaviour and hallucinations. On the drive back to the hospital, I even jumped out of the car. At the hospital, the paranoia, mania, and psychosis intensified. At one point, I tried to untie the doctor’s shoes. I was admitted to the psychiatric ward, where I stayed for five days.

After numerous tests, diagnostic uncertainty, and worsening symptoms, a lumbar puncture finally revealed it was autoimmune encephalitis with NMDAR antibodies. I was moved to the Neuro intensive care unit, where I experienced mutism, catatonia, and underwent weeks of treatment with tubes, medications, and interventions. The hospital eventually determined I needed more specialized care and arranged for me to be flown to a hospital equipped to treat cases like mine. I spent the next month and a half in different Neuro units, receiving treatments such as plasma exchange – PLEX – and Rituximab, much of that time catatonic.

Slowly, with my family by my side, signs of healing began. I don’t remember the early progress, but I do remember the physio team helping me walk and talk again, the first time my fiancé wheeled me outside to sit in the sun, and my final day at that hospital before being transferred closer to home.

At my fourth and final hospital, where I stayed for three weeks, memories of my recovery started to return. The physio and rehab teams helped me learn to write, walk without a walker, understand my disease, and even practice everyday tasks like grocery shopping and cooking. After discharge, I continued outpatient care for five months, working to regain independence, rebuild social skills, and begin the journey back to work.

Now, two and a half years later, I still face challenges, many of which I try to hide. The biggest ones involve word-finding and memory. It’s a strange feeling to owe my life to doctors, nurses, and rehab teams I barely remember, and to know that pieces of my life are simply missing. Sometimes it’s scary to think I may not remember events happening even now.

For anyone who is on the other side of the worst of this illness, my advice is to give yourself grace. Your life doesn’t have to look the way it did before for you to thrive. Let your experiences shape your perspective, you don’t need to fight that.

And for caregivers or loved ones supporting someone through a journey like this: be their advocate. Fight for them every day.

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Story published February 2026