Talking with Yeterian helped Favaloro, he says, and reminded him that his situation could have been a lot worse. The professor told him of football players who sustained severe head injuries and could not remember anything they read. Other head-injury patients are incapable of forming new memories. "I kept thinking, it's only temporary and it could be worse," Favaloro said.

Being back at Colby was not always easy, though. On Homecoming Weekend, when many of Favaloro's friends returned to campus, he was approached by a woman he thought he did not know. She turned out to be a girlfriend he had met, dated and broken up with during senior year. After he told her about the accident, she responded, "Oh. Hi," and introduced herself.

Over the next few months, as Favaloro struggled to recapture the lost memories from his senior year, more Colby classmates emerged to rekindle their friendships. "There were many friends who went out of their way for me. It turns out that I had met and become friendly with many people during those nine lost months," Favaloro said.

Classmates sought him out to reconnect, often by phone as soon as they heard about the accident. Some had to reintroduce themselves. "They all had at their fingertips several stories for me with the dual intention of helping me put my recent past back together again and demonstrating how important our friendship was to them. It's quite an amazing thing," Favaloro said.

Favaloro's life began returning to normal during a biology lecture he was attending as a teacher's assistant at Colby in mid-October. Staring off into space, he was suddenly hit by the thought that his friend Melanie Puza '99's favorite ice-cream flavor was mint chocolate chip. After class he confirmed this tidbit--something he had learned within the nine-month period of senior year.

"I was told that if I aggressively pursued these memories they would not come back," he said. "I just had to relax sometimes." Over the next few months, more memories returned. Though Favaloro eventually could recall most of what previously had been lost to amnesia, he remained unsure of where he wanted to attend graduate school.

Remembering that he never heard back from Dartmouth, Favaloro decided to find out what had happened to his application. He called Dartmouth and discovered that, though he had been invited to visit the Hanover, N.H., campus, the invitation had been lost in the mail. Favaloro jumped at the chance to visit Dartmouth and discovered a department where he felt comfortable. He notified Penn that he no longer planned to attend and enrolled at Dartmouth in the fall of 1997.

Reflecting on the ordeal, Favaloro is thankful for the role that fate played in his eventual decision to study at Dartmouth, where he now is researching biologically active compounds under three research scientists, Gordon Gribble, Michael Sporn, M.D., and Tadashi Honda.

Reflecting on his rare experience with amnesia, he said he learned that "The things you think can't be taken away from you, can." No memory and no event should ever be taken for granted, he says. "What is possibly just your normal, average day is really, really important."

Editor's Note:
    The year that Favaloro spent at Colby following his accident and his decision to delay graduate school not only helped to retrieve memories from his senior year but solidified his affection for the College, he says. "Professor Mundy got me the job in chemistry and asked about work in admissions and biology and, in so doing, allowed me to come back to Colby," said Favaloro. "By allowing me to be an instructor for two introductory chemistry labs, he not only reinforced all of that material but increased my interest in teaching as a profession; it was my first experience `on the other side of the desk.' I got to play a small part in the instruction of a few Colby students."
    He also is grateful to Tom Kopp and Judy Levine Brody '58 in admissions for giving him the opportunity to work there and helping him learn the job, which entailed interviewing prospective students and reading applications.
    Now in his second year of graduate school, Favaloro is studying biologically active compounds in hopes of identifying plant-based "secrets" that might help fight cancer, arthritis and other diseases in humans. "I'm enjoying myself up here despite the large amount of time spent in lab--it's a huge intellectual challenge for which Professor Mundy prepared me well," he said.
    The amnesia is, so to speak, a distant memory. What little he hasn't retrieved, Favaloro says, probably isn't important anyway. "When you think about it, how much of each day can anybody reconstruct unless they were keeping a detailed journal?" he said. "I feel like I've got my entire life back now; there's no hole there."

Edward Thomas is news editor of The Dartmouth newspaper. His account of Frank Favaloro's recovery from retrograde amnesia originally appeared in The Dartmouth in November 1998. This version was edited and updated for publication in Colby