Thick Skin, Thin Skin

The memoir of a Filipino ophthalmologist who built a life and a practice in the American Midwest. Irineo Acacio trained in medicine in the Philippines, returned home to serve the two years his scholarship required, and came back to the United States for a fellowship at the University of Illinois Eye and Ear Infirmary before joining the Dreyer Medical Clinic, where he practised for twenty-seven years. Around that career he tells the rest of it: raising a family in Naperville, Illinois, the long drives and Christmases that make up a life, a costly lesson in trusting credentials over character, class reunions half a world away, and the first day of retirement in January 1999 - spent, characteristically, in a minivan headed for California with his wife Cora and their family. Written with candour and without self-importance, it is a doctor's account of immigration, work and family, and of what it takes to develop the thick skin the profession demands while keeping the thin skin that makes a person worth knowing.