Abraham Verghese discusses his book, "My Own Country: A Doctor's Story of a Town and its People in the Age of AIDS." The non-fiction story is about his experiences as a doctor in Johnson City, Tennessee and dealing with his patients who contracted AIDS and the stigma involved with the disease. Johnson City had a population of 50,000, but had a disproportionate amount of AIDS cases that was caused by gay men leaving large cities and settling in Johnson City. He speaks of his own homophobia resulting from never really dealing with gay men and patients. He mentions that most of his patients never got tested for the disease prior to him treating them due to the fear of confidentiality in the mid 1980s. He states that the dedication he had to his patients had a negative effect on his marriage, but was not the only reason for the problems in his marriage.
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