The idea of this book arose from conversations with Morgan Amanda Fritzlen and Juliet Mavromatis. I want to thank them for their generosity of time, experience, and spirit. Morgan Amanda, you are very much missed.
Much appreciation to David Baron, Tracey Pratt, Marije Klein, Corine Jansen, and Debra Roter who spent hours sharing their stories with me, and answering dozens of follow-up e-mails. Thank you also to Jerrice and Tom Fritzlen, Heidi E. Hamilton, Annie Brewster, Ted Kaptchuk, Eric Simon, Richard Street, Graham Bodie, Janet Bavelas, Steve Kraman, Carol Liebman, Roel Straathof, Jane Ogden, Donald Boudreau, and Peter Lewy. There are also many others who kindly shared their thoughts, but there simply wasn’t room in the book for all of these incredible stories.
I am extremely grateful to my patients, who’ve taught me so much about medicine and about being a doctor. A special thanks to my colleagues at Bellevue and NYU who have been so supportive over the years. Some anecdotes in this book previously appeared in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Thank you to those editors, especially to Toby Bilanow of the New York Times, for helping to shape and give life to those stories.
An enormous and ongoing thanks to Helene Atwan—my editor and publisher—for showing nothing but optimism, enthusiasm, and astute editorial eyes all along the way. Gratitude to Pam MacColl, Tom Hallock, Alyssa Hassan, and the entire team at Beacon Press for their meticulous work and endless encouragement. In the publishing world where editorial teams are typically upended more frequently than the spin cycle on a dryer, to have worked with Helene, Pam, and Tom through five books over fifteen years might qualify for a Guinness world record, or at the very least a round of Guinness stout.
My children—Naava, Noah, and Ariel—quip that each of their entrances into the family was timed to a book. It wasn’t quite planned that way, but fifteen years ago, in the acknowledgments for my first book, I thanked Naava for teaching me the fine art of editing on a computer while nursing. Now I can thank the crew (and I’d be pilloried if I left out our trusty Lab-mutt, Juliet) for teaching me the more formidable but more fun art of concentrating amid chaos. It’s boisterous but never boring, amply stocked with whole-wheat-everything bagels, dog biscuits, cutthroat backgammon, and musical grit.
My everlasting gratitude is to my husband, Benjy Akman—trouper extraordinaire—who has survived these books and all the associated tumult and travel with peerless aplomb. No matter who was in crisis over a science fair project, or whose violin string had popped, or how little milk was left in the fridge or how much barking there was in the background, he’d always take care of it all with a smile and say, “Everything’s fine. Go enjoy!” It’s been quite the lively book we’ve shared thus far, and I can’t wait to see what the next chapter brings.