WPLN News Archive; News Archive 10/22/98-11/25/98; Abraham Verghese The Tennis Partner (Rebecca Bain) 11 6 98

physician abraham verdi's not only has extraordinary experiences he writes about them extraordinarily well is powerful memoir of my own country about treating aids patients in johnson city tennessee was a national bestseller and the recipient of many awards including time magazine's best books of the year list and now he has written another memoir about his move to texas his disintegrating marriage and his relationship with david smith one of verdi uses medical students in el paso in the hospital eight is the teacher and a mentor but on the tennis courts those roles reversed for david played professionally the two develop a strong and important friendship which abraham verdi's describes honestly and movingly in the tennis partner women writes so eloquently about their best friendships and gay men have written the most touching memoirs about their lungs and heterosexual men i believe have very deep friendships but they're always coached in a sporting metaphor your football but here hunting buddy and in my case my tennis partner annette absence of these are much

more important to us they're more willing to acknowledge and the reason for this reticence isn't entirely clear to the tight expendable but one might tell us with this book was to try and give voice to the depths of a friendship that was terribly terribly important to me smith was a caring and compassionate friend abraham verdi's especially while aig was going through his painful divorce eventually verdi's learned that david smith was also in recovery only hits was from drug addiction one day he turned to me and said well you really know anything about media who whenever someone says that you know something heavies of article i said what was the original and he began to tell me how eighteen months before i met him he had been a terrible intravenous cocaine addict the dose that he would inject to get i was also the tools that we've given a seizure and he'd wake up with his tongue but when and how often got to get more and he told his tale of many attempts at recovery in detox and being arrested and how he'd fight and they managed to go through a programme choose the right to demonstrate as a roadie for the local

school for one year before they took him back unfortunately david smith's cocaine addiction claimed him again and their jeez felt powerless to help his friend withstand it's lethal pole to try and better understand what was driving smith to certain destruction from drugs he visited the talbot marsh clinic in atlanta that's a drug treatment facility only for doctors and we were sitting in that room and looking at the physicians sitting a circle and the most amazing thing about as i could not distinguish myself from them in any way these were the most gifted caring skilled empathetic people men and women that you'd ever want to meet but the stories they were telling are absolutely mindboggling an extraordinary intelligent emergency room physician took her two infants to crack infested neighborhood locked the kids in the car went to score a crack and then she came out a few hours later to find the car vandalized the kids screaming inside someone trying to get in and when she

tried to intervene she was assaulted and woke up in a prison hospital with the knowledge that she was now a prisoner at issue are in foster care and it's at that moment that i really completely understood how addiction is really a disease in fact the problem of drug addiction among doctors is one of the important subtext to the tennis partner every year it takes to compete classes of medical students to replace the number of physicians who commit suicide and most of those suicides are major drug addiction for a female physician under the age of fifty her risk of death a seven for higher than her peers in other professions has not breast cancer is not a this is not accidents that suicide is a leading cause of premature death among physicians it might ask well why are physicians more susceptible and i think the answer is because physicians do not take drugs by and large to produce euphoria rather than take a drug to relieve that this four years of their existence just for having the opposite of euphoria and so when they get stressed when they become dust for a concert of recognizing that they're getting ill they

focus on a symptom begin to self medicate and then the problem becomes physician and writer abraham verdi's his latest memoir is titled the tennis partner my complete conversation with favre diesel be broadcast this week on the fine print tomorrow at noon and sunday morning at nine for national public radio i'm rebecca bain are you