Patient H.M. (43 page)

F
OR
B
AMBAM,
L
OLO,
L
ASKA, AND
A
NWYN

I
've been working on this book for six years, and hundreds of people have helped me along the way, providing editorial, emotional, and financial support. There's no way I can list everyone who deserves to be thanked, but here are a few.

Andy Ward is my editor at Random House. Andy is ridiculously talented, enormously patient, and contagiously enthusiastic. Are there better qualities for a book editor, or a human being? (If Andy were editing the preceding two sentences, he'd remind me that I have a bad habit of overusing adverbs
and
rhetorical questions, but I know for a fact that he avoids reading nice things about himself, so I think I'm safe.) Others at Random House who've been a big help include Juliet Brooke, Kaela Myers, Beth Pearson, Richard Elman, Jennifer Prior, Evan Stone, Kathryn Jones, Maralee Youngs, Lawrence Krauser, Greg Kubie, Carolyn Foley, and Caitlin McCaskey. Also, if the words in this book aren't any good that's my fault, but at the very least they're coming to you in a striking package. That's thanks to the Random House art department, including my cousin, art director Paolo Pepe, the cover designer, Evan Gaffney, and the interior designer, Simon Sullivan.

Tyler Cabot is my editor at
Esquire
. We teamed up on an article about Patient H.M. in 2010, and that article led directly to this book project. Tyler is a brilliant editor and a great guy, and one of the hardest things about the last few years has been having to cut way down on doing magazine stories with him. I hope to team up with him again soon. Others at
Esquire
who've helped me through this process in one way or another include Mike Sager, Tom Junod, Kevin McDonnell, Ryan D'Agostino, Chris Jones, Bob Scheffler, Peter Griffin, and David Granger. Also, my former editor at
Esquire,
Terry Noland, assigned me my first, aborted Patient H.M. story, way back in 2005, which got this whole ball rolling.

Sloan Harris is my agent at ICM, and he's had my back throughout, while also providing fantastic editorial notes. His passion for this project, and his occasional whip-cracking, have both been essential. Heather Karpas at ICM has also been great.

Archivists and librarians tend to be amazing people, possessing all the investigative skills of good journalists, but none of the ego. Among the ones who've helped me dig up material for this book are Steve Lytle at Hartford Hospital, Lori James at the Institute of Living, Melissa Grafe at the Yale School of Medicine, Lily Szcygiel at McGill University, Jessica Murphy at the Harvard Medical School's Center for the History of Medicine, Allen Ramsey and Mel Smith at the Connecticut State Library, and Jennifer Kinniff at George Washington University.

In order for me to tell this story, dozens of people have had to tell me their own. Some of those people are major characters in the book, and I imagine that their contributions are obvious to the reader. Jacopo Annese, Brenda Milner, Mortimer Mishkin, Karl Pribram, Suzanne Corkin, Dennis Spencer, Howard Eichenbaum: Each was invaluable in helping me understand one or another aspect of the larger story. (Sadly, two of them, Pribram and Corkin, passed away while I was completing work on this book.) Other people were featured less prominently, or didn't appear at all, but still provided crucial insights. These included Justin Feinstein, Karim Nader, Daniel Nijensohn, Goldie Nijensohn, Nir Patel, Ruth Klaming, Natalie Schenker-Ahmed, Colleen Sheh, Paul Maechler, Oliver Hardt, Alice Cronin-Golomb, Marilyn Jones-Gotman, Nancy Hebben, Duncan Hunter, Eileen Mucha, David Mumford, Donald MacKay, Lori Johnson, Phil Hilts, Jenni Ogden, Linda DeLisle, Sandra Parlee, Myra Crowley, Oliver Hardt, Bette Ferguson, and more. Many, many more. Thank you all.

Then, of course, there's Henry. I never met him, and wish I had. Sometimes, thinking of Henry, I'm reminded of what Kurt Vonnegut wrote about the carpet bombing of Dresden, the inspiration for his novel
Slaughterhouse-Five
. Vonnegut, writing of the bombing, stated that “only one person on the entire planet got any benefit from it. I am that person. I wrote this book.” I can't claim to be the only person to benefit from Henry's misfortune, but having written this book, I am now one of the many profiteers. I can't ever repay the debt I owe Henry. None of us can.

Apart from Andy and myself, my mother, Lisa, and my sister, Laska, have probably had more contact with this book than anyone. I've read drafts of most of the chapters aloud to them, leaning on their ears, their brains, and their hearts. I simply couldn't have done this without them. I know some parts of this story were difficult for them to hear, particularly the ones about my grandmother, Bambam. She died a few years ago, just before I dove into the most disturbing aspects of her own personal history. She was a quiet, private, much loved woman, and I have mixed feelings about dragging her darkest moments into the light.

Lots of good friends and family members have also listened to big chunks of this book, or just listened to me ramble on about it, and provided helpful feedback. These include Vance Jacobs, Matt Moyer, Amy Toensing, Sara Tillett, Angie Conte, Katherine McCallum, Genesee Keevil, Mich Gignac, June Keevil, Sarah Dohle, Kat Roberts, Bil Roberts, Gail Roberts, Darby Newnham, Ian Stewart, Moira Sauer, Carrie Watters, Andrea Learned, Olda Dittrich, Didi Pershouse, Edward Pershouse, Paige Williams, and Justin Heckert. Two eagle-eyed and sharp-brained neuroscientists at Stanford, Aaron Andalman and Matthew Lovett-Barron, read through the entire manuscript and gave me extremely useful notes, though any remaining scientific errors are on me.

Finally, my daughter, Anwyn. In the years I've been working on this book, I've been away too much, distracted too often. That sucks, and I want to change that. Partly for Anwyn, but also for selfish reasons, since a lot of my favorite days on this planet have been spent with her, building snow forts in the Yukon, exploring caves in Greece, or climbing mountains in New York. Love you, Anwyn. Can't wait for our next adventure.

L
UKE
D
ITTRICH
has been working as a journalist since 1997, and his on-the-job experiences have included running a marathon in Antarctica and walking 340 miles along the United States/Mexico border. He is a contributing editor at
Esquire,
and his articles have appeared in a variety of anthologies, including
Best American Crime Writing,
Best American Travel Writing,
and
Best American Science and Nature Writing
. A story he wrote about the survivors of a devastating Missouri tornado won the 2012 National Magazine Award for feature writing. This is his first book.

lukedittrich.com