Tell me I'm okay: a doctor's story

Description

Part One: Pre-AIDS; 1. First and Last; 2. Growing Up; 3. University; 4. Vietnam; 5. London; 6. I Meet Michael; 7. Return to Australia; Part Two: AIDS; 8. The Wave on the Horizon; 9. The HIV Antibody Test and Its Controversies; 10. The Queensland Babies; 11. I Leave the MCDC; 12. The Demise of Fairfield Hospital; 13. All My Patients; 14. Cairns; 15. Ronald.;Throughout my years of practice, people have often asked me why I decided to specialise in sexual health. The question is not surprising given that sexual health doctors are not held in the same regard as those who work in other medical specialties ... We sexual health physicians don't grow rich, but we have a wealth of stories-wry, funny, and sad-all illustrative of the human condition." In "Tell Me I'm Okay", author and retired sexual health doctor David Bradford relates a remarkable set of stories about growing up as a gay child in a strongly Christian family, struggling with his sexuality, serving as an army doctor in Vietnam during the Vietnam War, working as Director of the Melbourne Communicable Diseases Centre at the time of the arrival of HIV/​AIDS, and in private practice with hundreds of AIDS patients, many of whom did not survive. Here is a humane, wise, thoughtful voice, always conscious of the wonderful, the absurd, the fragile nature of life. David Bradford's story tells us much about who we are, how we've changed, and where some at least of our scars have come from. Part One: Pre-AIDS 1. First and Last 2. Growing Up 3. University 4. Vietnam 5. London 6. I Meet Michael 7. Return to Australia Part Two: AIDS 8. The Wave on the Horizon 9. The HIV Antibody Test and Its Controversies 10. The Queensland Babies 11. I Leave the MCDC 12. The Demise of Fairfield Hospital 13. All My Patients 14. Cairns 15. Ronald.