Country: A Doctor\'s Story,\" by Abraham Verghese.

¶ … Country: A Doctor's Story," by Abraham Verghese. Specifically, it will look at one case from the book and discuss the effect AIDS had on the doctor and the effect the patient had on the doctor.

MY OWN COUNTRY" - A CASE

Abraham Verghese is an Indian doctor who specializes in infectious diseases. He came to live and practice in Johnson City Tennessee in 1985, after the first AIDS case had already been treated. In 1985, the local hospital where he worked admitted its first patient with AIDS, and before long, an epidemic seemed to have hit the small town in the Smoky Mountains. This book tells of Dr. Verghese's experiences with AIDS patients, and how they touched his own life.

The case of Bobby Keller and Ed Maupin was especially interesting because of the further implications of their story. Ed and Bobby lived in a small town about 60 miles from the doctor's office in Johnson City. They came to him because they were afraid to be treated or tested in their own town. They had lived together for about 10 years, and both had been married before and fathered children. Both of them tried to deny their homosexuality by marrying, but both of them found they could not live a lie. They practiced unsafe sex with multiple partners, and had both contracted HIV.

They had sexual encounters out of town, and sometimes in their small town, but they were still ashamed, and knew they would be ostracized by the town if it was found they had the disease. Bobby was extremely emotional; crying hysterically when he found out they had the disease, and begging the doctor to help his friend, who felt tired all the time.

After Ed died, Bobby joined an AIDS support group, and befriended the wife of another AIDS patient who also had the disease, Vickie McCray. By the end of the book, Bobby has also died, and most of the patients Dr. Verghese introduced in the book have died, or are in the final stages of the disease. Vickie McCray seems to hold the group together, even after losing her own husband. She decides do go back to school to get a degree in nursing, and the doctor is extremely proud of her.

Treating AIDS patients did not bother Dr. Verghese, in fact, he was extremely professional and compassionate with his patients, but it did bother other members of the town, and even some of his peers in the medical profession. Even members of his family disapproved of what he did. "Do you wear gloves when you touch them?' my dad asked" (Verghese 168). "What I didn't mention was how stressed I felt some days, how alienated I felt from other physicians, from friends, and even from my wife. By God, if what I was doing was noble, why did it feel like something...something shameful?" (Verghese 168). The small-town prejudice is never far away in this book, from nurses who want to just let the AIDS patients die, to even family members who cannot cope with the disease. That is perhaps the most depressing part of the book - that so many people are small-minded and petty, and cannot see past their prejudices to the real people who are dying.

Ed dies rather suddenly from the disease, and his lover, Bobby, did not even get to see him before he died. It was a sad story, and it affected the doctor almost as much as it affected his patient. "Now it seemed as if everything I witnessed was imbued with this sense of loss" (Verghese 229). He begins to really study the disease and its causes, and becomes nearly obsessed with discovering how the local men contracted and carried the disease.

Most of all, working with the AIDS patients has undermined the doctor's own marriage. His wife nearly loses patience with him, and wants to go to counseling. He instead takes a leave of absence with the Medical Center, and takes a job in Iowa doing clinical work in an AIDS treatment center. The relationship between he and his wife is not resolved by the end of the book, but it does not seem hopeful.

Clearly, the experience Dr. Verghese had with his patients changed his life forever. He vowed to find ways to help them live out their lives with as much quality and pride that they could. Near the end of the book he says, "No matter how ling I practice medicine, no matter what happens with this retrovirus, I will not be able to forget these young men, the little towns they came from, and the cruel, cruel irony of what awaited them in the big city" (Verghese 403).