One doctor takes full responsibility for One Doctor’s flaws but I’m glad to share credit for its strengths with others. Janis Donnaud, my agent, and Leslie Meredith, my editor at Simon Schuster, believed in this book from the beginning and made it better in the end. Mark Lachs, Cornell’s Co-Chief of Geriatrics, encouraged me to write and helped me get started. Andy Schafer, the Chair of Medicine at Cornell, provided inspiration about the best that medicine can be and supported my efforts in many ways.
Most of all, I am indebted to the three extraordinary people who read this book early and often and helped me understand what it could be: my loving wife, Janice, who, among her many other talents, is a brilliant editor; my superstar daughter, Caitlin Reilly Smith, who is wise and kind beyond her years; and Art Evans, a good friend and the best doctor I know.
There is no way to thank the thousands of physicians and patients I have learned from and admired—in New England, Rochester, Chicago, and New York—during the course of my career. In a very real sense, they all wrote this book with me. Martha and Steve Richardson, together with their entire extended family, deserve singular recognition in this regard. They know the reasons why—and that, at least for now, will have to do.