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Summary: Haunting memoirs from the trenches of a distant front
Review: Foreign-born physicians, especially South Asian ones such as the author of this remarkable memoir, frequently are perceived as even more arrogant, distant, and smug about their high status and income in rural areas than are urban, American-born ones. Verghese, who grew up in Ethiopia and who finished medical school in his (Christian) parents� homeland of India, clearly describes the allocation of medical personnel in the US. He also understands the resentments by those of old stock, poor white patient of affluent foreign-born doctors. As the title indicates, Verghese wanted to feel at home where he chose to settle, to provide his sons a sense of belonging in one place, a sense that he had not had in his own peripatetic life. Like his patients, however, he was never certain that seeming acceptance was was more than provisional.This insightful, lyrical, and moving book provides a vivid account of being an alien doctor in rural America dealing with a terrifying disease that was (and is) also perceived as alien, as something that, in the view of many, other kinds of people contract and probably deserve. Acute analyses of American (including Asian-American) arrangements and assumptions underlie a poignant narrative of AIDS coming to the northeastern Tennessee hills. Verghese shares Oliver Sacks�s ability to engage readers in the horror and the mystery of sufferings for which physicians have no magic bullets. As Paul Farmer, another physician who made a difference, showed in _AIDS and Accusation_, how a society responds to AIDS illuminates much about the society, not only how medical services are organized and financed in it. Verghese shows strengths as well as weaknesses in rural Southeastern American backwaters. He also illuminates connections from such seemingly isolated places to the larger society and ties of blood to distant urban centers where gay men sought refuge.
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Summary: Humanity is Second to Science as the Basis of Good Medicine
Review: It's clear from the cover picture that "My Own Country" is not about your idealized American county doctor. Abraham Verghese is dark skinned, could be a native of a third world country's medical school or a graduate of an American off shore medical school where medical students are recruited and trained to help fill staff shortages in American hospitals. Except, the surprise in this beautifully written autobiographical medical story is the, oftentimes, experimental science lesson behind the medicine. Verghese is as well trained in his medical style as any American phyician, (he is Indian) with the emphasis being on "training". It seems like Verghese spends most of his professional career training for his next medical puzzlement. Thankfully, at least according to Verghese's account, medical practitioners attempt to be oblivious about their race or most other humanly distinctive features because the science of the profession overrides their quest to cure. Describing his life in almost parellel segments, Verghese seems to compartmentalize his family from his professional self in the style of the 24 hour medical man with Johns Hopkins or Bellevue credentials. In "My Own Country", Verghese eventually seems to finds peace between his ethnicity, nationality and his professional demeanor in the unlikely location of the Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee, the town of Johnson City, where he works as Chief of the Medical Staff at the Veterans Administration Hospital. As a side practice, however, he becomes involved with the early history, diagnosis and attempts to treat Human Immune Deficiency Syndrome (HIV) and Acquired Immune Defficiency Syndrom (AIDS). As a result of Verghese's professional compulsion to undertand the science behind the treatments he prescribes, he continues to run afoul of his personal life and risks the alienation of his nuclear ethnic Indian family. "My Own Country" is clearly the story of a self made medical hero, told in his own words. Those who want their personal physicians to be holistic healers and more in touch with their humanity may disagree with Verghese's approach to his profession. Indeed, one wonders how much of the medical text was toned down to make the book appealing to the trade paperback market. Regardless of how medical the "doctor-doctor" in Verghese is, he is still human enough to be emotionally riveted by the birth of his children, at least for a little while. Perhaps the best thing about reading "My Own Country" is the professional manner presented for thrid world country physicians who are as dedicated (or more) to healing as any, but defensive about skin color in America. In other words, identifying good, even great, physicians, should be a color blind process. Besides making a positive social statement, even in the face of personal sacrifice, Verghese writes a good story. "My Own Country" is entertaining and there's a lesson to be learned for everyone in the reading.
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