Customer Reviews

My Own Country: A Doctor's Story of a Town and Its People in the Age of Aids

5 star:		(71)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

With the eye, ear and voice of a novelist and with the compassion of a healer, Dr. Abraham Verghese has taken his experiences as "the AIDS doctor" of east Tennessee and turned them into an incredible memoir. This is one of the most touching and engrossing books I've read in years.

When Verghese landed in Johnson City, Tennessee in 1985, he came as a newly-accredited infectious diseases specialist to treat veterans, most of whom had lung cancer and emphysema, and to spend one day a week in the town medical center he learned to call the "Miracle Center". When the center's first AIDS patient entered the hospital, it was the beginning of the plague which would soon extend across the country, not just in the big city locales where the majority of homosexual men and drug abusers lived. They were coming home to die.

Because the young doctor had a strong desire to help and an ability to tolerate the differences of others, he gradually found himself almost obsessed with caring for his patients. He loved them as people, and as they began to die, he mourned. They were on his mind constantly, even when he was home with his beautiful wife and small sons to the point where his marriage and the center of his home became endangered by his devotion to a setting and to people which excluded them.

This book is so beautifully written I could not put it down. Each patient became fully alive for me, thanks to Verghese's ability to describe them, and I, too, mourned them as they passed. This is a memoir I will not soon forget. Poignant in its humanity, staggering in the scope of its tragedy, it will remain Verghese's monument to Tennessee and the people he came to love in all their variety.

Wonderful book.

As a physician who was just finishing training when AIDS burst on the scene in the 80's, the panic and fear among medical staff described in this book are actually tame to what I saw in my hospital. I am one of those "who would, " as Dr. Verghese categorized those who would or would not care for HIV infected patients, and this truly separated us from the vast majority of those at that time who let their fear rule over their intellect. Dr. Verghese tells this exciting story with great compassion for his patients and their families, and it is clear that his emotional connection to them, which is stongly discouraged in medical training, came at great personal cost. As someone who now lives and practices in East Tennessee, I feel he accurately described the people, the culture, and the region's great beauty. His yearning to fit in--to have a home--is poignantly obvious throughout the book even as he becomes more and more isolated from his family and his collegues. Several of my collegues trained under or worked with Dr. Verghese during this time, and they all attest to his brilliance as a diagnostician, his great empathy for his patients, his nonjudgemental approach to the gay lifestyle, and his decency and approachability as a person. This book, in their opinions, is an accurate portrayal of the AIDS story in the rural setting. I am drawn to medical writing, particularly when written by physicians themselves, and Dr. Verghese is a master. This book moved me to tears as the deaths of all of these patients began to add up toward the end of the book, and one can't help but to feel the great waste of life that this virus causes. As a hospice medical director, I was also touched by Dr. Verghese's struggle to understand the process of dying, moving from his all-out attempts to save lives at the beginning of the book to his hospice-oriented approach toward the end. This is a masterful telling of how AIDS affects everyone -- patients, families, and doctors alike.

This book is absolutely stunning. Verghese's writing style is so unusual as he writes with humor, compassion, and keeps you fully informed as a outsider to his patients treatment, and their disease. During the begining stages of our dealings with the AIDS virus we were so quick to judge the population that received AIDS rather than treating it as a disease that impacts not only the patient but their family. Verghese is able to reflect a wholistic picture of the patient, and their family. He was a person that was interested in the patient, the disease, and learning about the gay culture. He did so in way that was free of prejudice, and it was a true learning experience. I highly recommend this book for those that wish to read a good book as well as those that are interested in the early days of the AIDS epidemic.

As a doctor, I rarely enjoy books about physicians because they simply don't show the reality of our lives.
Unlike the soap opera sexuality and black humor (and ridicule) in many medical best sellers, Dr. Verghese writes a the simple tale of a doctor and his patients, told with quiet compassion and an eye for the small details of human experience.
He tells of the daily fight to keep people alive. And he tells the story of how ordinary Americans confront this new disease with courage.
Too often, Southern Americans are portrayed as bigoted religious homophobes by the literati. His stories of how the close knit families confront and accept their dying sons and husbands.
And he tells of the common --but rarely discussed-- story of immigrants. This a story I see in my own family, where one person comes, and then is joined by friends and family, and soon a thriving immigrant community invigorates the small towns of middle America.
Finally, he shows the strains of practicing medicine in the context of a daily life.
Most of the reviews paint this as a book about HIV, and it is.
But it is a book about families, about culture, and especially about the life of ordinary physicians who daily confront the struggle against sickness and mortality.
I would recommend it to anyone thinking of joining the medical profession.

My Own Country : A Doctor's Story by ABRAHAM VERGHESE ostensibly chronicles the appearance of AIDS in the rural burgh of Johnson City, TN in the mid 80's, and in fact the book does chronicle that event. However, this book is far less about AIDS than it is about the human condition in general and, more specifically, the transformative powers of both fear and love.

I had previously read Dr. Verghese's The Tennis Partner, an excellent book that shares some critical threads with this effort. In both books Verghese, an Indian from India, effectively portrays both the problems as benefits associated with being a foreign doctor in America--the former being the prejudices that accrue to those who had the perceived misfortune to be born in the third world and the freedom that being an "outsider" brought to the patient-doctor relationship.

The Tennis partner was a fictional work with obvious significant autobiographical undertones. This book is clearly an autobiographical work of nonfiction that benefits considerably from Verghese's previous work within a fictional realm. Verghese writes very well and he uses his quite considerable talents to render a moving, suspenseful and insightful book.

These being a medical autobiography, a fair amount of fairly detailed, turgid technical aspects are a part of the package. That is the only genuine criticism I can make. Other than that, the book is a fascinating, engaging, highly moving account of human misery, death and, ultimately, triumph.

This is one of the best books I've read this year. Definitely a 5 star effort.

This is one of the best books I've read from a contemporary author. Verghese writes elegantly and with searing honesty about the AIDS patients he encountered as a young immigrant in small town America. So much has been written about his wonderful writing style and his compassion and humanity as a doctor...and I agree with all of that. I was especially interested in how he describes the gay experience as being analagous to the foreign immigrant experience in America. Both groups gain sustenance from their communities; both groups long for acceptance from the mainstream. It's interesting that the author's desire for assimilation is greater than his need to identify with the local Indian community. This book succeeds on every level. You gain insights into the life of the gay community, Indian immigrants, the medical community, and most of all the emotional and mental state of the man who describes it all. Thank you Doctor Verghese for this great book!

This book is an amazing way to discover the hardships that those must over come who are diagnosed with HIV and AIDS. I am from Johnson City, TN. As a part of a clinical I was doing in high school we were given many options of books to read for a grade, this was one. I was drawn to it because hey, this was my home town. But what I got from this book overcame everything I had expected.

I wept reading this book. It is amazing how you get to know Dr. Verghese and his patients. You, in a way, experience their hardships and triumps, even the families loss. He explains word for word the exhausting battle of finding out and forming a plan of action. He puts you into the realization of these individuals and what they felt. You begin to morn their loosing battles and celebrate in their strength in recovery.

He discribes this area of Tennessee with such effortless ease. It's beauty struck with something so horrid. Reading the book I forgot that this was my home, the people in it were people of my town. For a nieve high school student it made me realize that no matter what the year was this was real and it was here in my own back yard. "My Own Country."

I learned more than just about the people or about the land but the medical terminology was explained and he made you the reader understand what it meant to him and the world of medicine. Each detail will make you feel like you are right there in the ER of the "Miracle Center".

There were times I just could not put this book down. I have read it three times now and I am starting my fourth. The stories in this book of the patients are tragic. Anyone who has any type of preconceived notion of what it is like to have AIDS/HIV or what "kind of people" have AIDS/HIV should read this book. It will open your eyes to a whole new world.

This story of our small town, as it was then, has reached all over the world. It has inspired and educated everyone who has read it. I'm sure that it still means a great deal to the families of those in it.

AIDS will always be scary, it will always be something that will cause pain and horror to our ears, this book describes a small town with prejudice of it's own before a time of AIDS and how it conforms to another way of thinking. Just like in this book, not everyone will ever be accepting of those who contract this disease but everyone will be made aware of it.

I suggest this book to any reader with any reading taste. You will walk away with much more than what you came with. You will get to know our people and their stories from the mind of a man who knew them all. Abraham Verghese was brilliant in writing this collection of lives on paper. Thank you Dr. Verghese for letting their voices be heard all over the world and inspiring those who take time to indulge in your brilliance.

There is out there a growing field of medical fiction; that is, books authored by literature doctors about their patients' stories. This is a compelling read about AIDS in an East Tennessee town, one where the doctor knows he's not God, and in many ways, is just as confused as his AIDS patients. We at once see a country grappling with how to handle an epidemic, a town trying to overcome their phobias, and a doctor trying to make a difference while balancing his work and his family.

Dr. Verghese writes with finese and does not miss a beat. This is a true novel, compelling through and through, and raises important themes about finding your place in the world and alternatives to the elusive American dream. Do not miss this fantastic piece of medical literature.

The author of this book is an Indian doctor, working at a hospital in Johnson city, Tennessee, at the start of the AIDS epidemic. His account is of being the only infectious diseases physician in a rural community at a time when the first wave of HIV-positive gay men were returning to their hometowns from New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. His observations of the men and women who come to him for care, and the relationships that have grown between them, are insightful and vivid. Though he is heterosexual and married with two small children, his intuitive compassion for people with AIDS is a lesson in what it is to be nonjudgmental.

However, the crisis for him is to live in a place and time where his curiosity and compassion are shared by almost no one else, both within and outside his professional community. Through his work, he comes to a deeper understanding of homophobia and the irrationality that drives people's fear of disease and disability. As an African-born Indian, happily Americanized, he finds in the social isolation of his patients something of his own status as an "outsider." We also see the demands that professional commitments can make on marriage and parenting.

An outgoing and obviously dedicated, self-sacrificing physician, the author is slowly overcome by the growing solitude of his professional and personal journey and the weariness of battling a disease with no cure. Although sometimes a triumph of dignity against all odds, the deaths of his patients are heart-breaking. This is a richly detailed book full of suspense, sorrow, and humor and beautifully written.

Dr. Verghese's depiction of AIDS in Johnson City is a powerful book about the way this disease first entered the American consciousness. As an outsider - an Indian doctor in the Midwest - writing about his experiences with the gay community and others who were first diagnosed with HIV and AIDS provides a unique perspective into the way people ostrasized and condemned, often in the name of God, those who were first diagnosed. One reviewer commented that the book is dated, but in fact, Verghese's account remains an important one as it not only describes a disease that has shaped and continues to shape our collective consciousness, but is also applicable for the way it reminds us how terrible we can be when faced with an unknown and how easy it can be to attack those we don't understand.

What Verghese does so well is provide a human aspect to almost everything he writes about. I, too, read the Tennis Partner before reading this, and I think the way he is able to juxtapose his own family life and the way it slowly disintegrates, while at the same time doing so much to keep other families together btoh physically and spiritually is remarkable. The individual cases he describes are so vivid and truly provides a face to the diease.

I highly reccomend this book to anyone considering the health profession (along with his other book the Tennis Partner and Gawunde's Complications) as well as people who are curious about infectious disease and its impacts upon society.