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1-Page Summary of My Own Country
Overall Summary
Verghese’s book is about his experience in rural Tennessee during the 1980s when he was a young physician for infectious diseases. He recounts how AIDS had not yet emerged as an epidemic, and he became the city’s expert on AIDS because so many people were seeking medical advice from him. Verghese describes the stigmas that accompanied this disease, as well as some of the emotions he felt while comforting patients until they died without knowing what caused their illness or having any cure for it.
The book begins in 1985, when the author was just starting his career as an infectious disease doctor. He came to Johnson City, Tennessee after having grown up there and during medical school. He thought that moving back to a rural community would help him avoid AIDS cases since they were more common on the east and west coasts of America at the time.
A few months before this doctor’s move, a gay man who had also started in Tennessee died after he was admitted to the hospital. He was resuscitated but diagnosed with AIDS and pneumonia. The respirator that kept him alive was destroyed because it was believed to be contaminated.
The arrival of Dr. Verghese combined with the stigma of an “inner city disease” attributed to gay men and drug users forms the background for this book. The author observes a transformation in people’s perceptions over time, reluctantly realizing its reach cannot be quarantined by stigmatizing it. Meanwhile, townspeople try to maintain life as usual, drinking and shopping while declining to acknowledge a growing epidemic. They hypocritically don’t suspect their own people as having a risk of infection with HIV, which is precursor virus to AIDS. This frightens Dr. Verghese because he sees extreme ignorance central to the spread of the epidemic
The later parts of the book recall different characters that Verghese meets during his time at Johnson City Hospital. He recalls a gay man with AIDS who returns home to die after having left for years. Another character, an extremely religious corporate executive, comes to the hospital with his wife and reveals they have kept their HIV status a secret from everyone out of fear of being stigmatized. These are all sympathetic portraits done by Verghese as he portrays how these people struggle with fear and shame about their condition in order to deal with it in whatever ways they can. He also discusses other aspects of hospital culture such as pay disparities between surgeons and interns, Indian customs like arranged marriages, and the social complexities involved in doing physical exams on humans.
Verghese seems to be very dedicated to his work. He goes out of his way to learn more about a patient he found strange, personally attends the surgery for one of those patients, and helps form a support group in Johnson City since there wasn’t one at the time. He expresses gratitude for this experience and says that he is optimistic about AIDS.
The author concludes the book by packing up his things to move to Iowa. He notes that he was emotionally exhausted from working with AIDS patients for so long, and that his family had been dealing with a lot of the stress as well.
This book is a unique piece of literature in the canon. It focuses on AIDS and its stigma, which is one of the most contentious issues in recent history. The author provides a personable perspective about what it’s like to work for those with AIDS and be involved with this issue as a whole.
