My Own Country: A Doctor's Story (Paperback)

By about page 250 I began to grow numb from the overload off all the personal stories. The book as well begins to ramble a bit but I can fully understand why Dr. Verghese chose to leave for a less stressful job.

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.

It is a truly beautiful book. If not great litterature, it is certainly a well written memoir that reads like a novel. But it is not fiction. One sees the progressive changes in the mood of the Doctor as his sense of duty slowly but surely affect his work and his family life.

But most important of all, if this book does not cure you from AIDS prejudice, nothing will.