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Latest 6 Reviews Here is what people are saying about the My Own Country : A Doctor's Story
"My Own Country"
2009-05-11
- Reviewed By An Amazon User
This is a frankly written history of the author's experiences with the coming of HIV to a small southern town (the author is an infectious diseases expert). Very interesting and easy to read.
"Well-written non-fiction"
2009-04-24
- Reviewed By Marla Singer from Northern Hemisphere
This book was well-written from a compassionate doctor's viewpoint. The subject matter, although very sad, was (and still is) largely overlooked by a majority of urbanites who may have dealt with the same circumstances. Tragic but uplifting.
Dr. Verghese is an East Indian physician who, for a time, practiced medicine in a small Tennessee town. His specialty was working with AIDS and HIV infected patients. He examines himself from the perspective of an outsider. He is from a different culture than virtually all the of the population surrounding him. He works with a sub-group of patients that are not welcomed in this very rural area and are often closeted. The attitudes of the town's population towards him are very questionable because they find it difficult to accept the the nature of his practice. All of this creates difficulty for the author and he finds himself more and more distant from his family.
The book is written in a series of vignettes about Dr. Verghese's patients along with his concomitant feelings and thoughts about them and the particular personal and medical situations they are facing.
Dr. Verghese becomes totally absorbed in his patients and their families lives as AIDS hits a large area of Appalachia, and he's transformed by the experience. Beautifully written, especially about the lives and deaths of his patients. Strongly recommended for anyone interested or involved in AIDS and medical stories.
This book was highly recommended by a friend/colleague. In fact he generously lent me his copy. The stories in this book are all real sad life stories. The images of each patient encounters are still very vivid on my mind and they all left big scars in my heart. It literally tore my heart apart when I read through the painful description of their sufferings till their last breath. They reminded me of the deficiency of our health care system (a big agenda item awaiting the next president-elected to tackle, if at all possible. we know it won't happen during this presidency for sure when the nation's focus is put on "war" and "combat"). There is so much more we, especially the health care professionals, can, should and must do to care for those who are tormented by ailments (both curable and incurable.) On the one hand, it saddened me to realize how ignorance, prejudice and selfishness of mankind can tear us apart. On the other hand it gave me hope knowing that there is always someone, like Dr. Verghese, who is heroic, selfless and willing to sacrifice for those who suffer. He is the perfect role model for all those who dedicate their life to health care.
I happened across this book and was immediately drawn into it. The author is a remarkable human being with deep empathy and sympathy with some of the first casualties of the AIDS epidemic. As a Tennessee native, this story was very interesting to me; it chronicles the spread of the disease not long after the disease was recognized. The personal stories of all concerned are engrossing, and it's heartbreaking because in those early days the medical profession had nothing to offer the sufferers--and suffer they surely did, regardless of how they contracted the disease, and the book includes stories of those who got it through blood transfusions. The human connections between this Indian doctor who was born in Ethiopia and the people of east Tennessee, made at the most basic level, are what makes this book powerful; yet the author does not excuse his own shortcomings which eventually led to the failure of his marriage. I couldn't put it down and finished it in about 3 days - and then immediately got his other book, The Tennis Partner. (Another reviewer said this is fiction - but it's nonfiction. I found it in the biography section of the public library.)
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International Available
"My Own Country"
"An Outsider Looking In"