20 Introduction
I have pointed out where contrasts emerge, but I was most struck by
the similar problems, crises, and types of insights. Doctors with HIV
shared much in common with those who faced cancer and other kinds
of serious medical problems: dilemmas of whether and how to tell col-
leagues, treat their own patients differently, be more spiritual, and con-
tinue to work, or retire and lose their career. Uncertainties loomed as to
how long the benefits of treatments would last before disease reasserted
itself. At times, experiences with HIV presented many of these issues writ
large, yet physicians with cancer also often confronted risky and invasive
treatments (e.g., toxic chemotherapies and radical surgeries), and uncer-
tain prognoses—given the possibility of disease recurrence and increased
risk of other types of primary cancers. Opportunistic infections arise
among both immunocompromised doctors on chemotherapy and those
infected with HIV. Doctors with HIV who had retired on disability, and
now felt better on new medications, faced dilemmas of whether and how
to restructure their professional and personal lives. Physicians recovering
from cancer also encountered the possibility of recurrence, and hence the
same issue, even if at times less starkly. Many ill doctors now came to
identify more with their patients (e.g., getting results to patients faster);
gay doctors with HIV who treated members of the gay community often
encountered this issue with added urgency. Some doctors with HIV con-
fronted particular stigma or discrimination due to fears that they might
infect patients, and to aspects of a physician’s background, such as sexual
orientation. Gay men—the group most affected among doctors—may face
added stigma. Yet fundamental issues of stigma and discrimination arose
for other physicians, too. Whatever these doctors who courageously talked
to me experienced, others whom I did not interview surely feel, too.
I have tried to illustrate these themes and the variations within them,
rather than merely presenting a sequential series of isolated doctors
speaking one after another. The material itself strongly dictated that I
not simply offer a series of short, distinct tales of each physician’s life.
Therefore, to highlight commonalities as well as differences, I have chosen
to present a group portrait, a montage, a collage, similar to a documentary,
in which interviews with different people are intercut, with each person
commenting on a specific issue in turn, and then reappearing. I have tried
to present these areas in the order and arc through which they occur in
these physicians’ lives. Granted, film documentaries have an advantage
over written text—the viewer can see the person speaking, and does not
have to be reminded each time that Mr. X is a spry, gray-haired, elderly