AEGiS-BKREV: Surviving the Fall: The Personal Journey of an AIDS Doctor

(BKREV) Surviving the Fall: The Personal Journey of an AIDS Doctor

Yale University Press, PO Box 209040, New Haven, CT 06520-9040. 145p. ISBN 0-300-07126-4. $20.00.
Peter A. Selwyn. 1998.

This is a fascinating insight into the day-to-day life of an AIDS doctor, during the early days of the epidemic. It documents the first wave of the AIDS epidemic in the Bronx, revealing the pain and losses of the doctor's patients. Peter Selwyn spent years under the stress of working with patients who eventually died. It made him understand more fully what it meant to have a father, who apparently committed suicide when Peter was an infant, and to be a father to two children. He states: "The lives that I came to know, the struggles I witnessed, were not only engrossing in themselves but also gripping in their relevance to my own life. As one patient told me, "AIDS is kind of like life, just speeded up"..."Nobody gets out of this life alive."" This first decade provided an "opportunity to go through fear, pain, and darkness and come out on the other side." A highly recommended book to anyone who has been touched by this dreaded disease called AIDS. All libraries should have multiple copies.

Keywords: Physicians; Biography

Copyright (c) 1999 - Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Review's may be reprinted or redistributed for the noncommercial purpose of scientific or educational advancement granted by Sections 107 and 108 of the Copyright Revision Act of 1976. For other reprinting, redistribution, or translation, address requests to H. Robert Malinowsky, University of Illinois at Chicago Library, PO Box 8198, Chicago, IL 60680 or electronically to hrm@uic.edu.
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Copyright © 1999 - The University of Illinois at Chicago. All materials in the journal are subject to copyright by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois and may be reprinted or redistributed for the noncommercial purpose of scientific or educational advancement granted by Sections 107 and 108 of the Copyright Revision Act of 1976. For other reprinting, redistribution, or translation, address requests to H. Robert Malinowsky, University of Illinois at Chicago Library, PO Box 8198, Chicago, IL 60680 or electronically to hrm@uic.edu.

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