Hooked on ID with Aaron J. Tande, MD
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My initial fascination with infectious diseases began as it did for many others: through the influence of my parents and exposure through books.
My mother and father were both in-service professionals, as a social worker and a police officer, respectively. They instilled in me the need to serve others in whatever way I could, but I knew neither profession was for me. In middle school, I was intrigued by Richard Preston’s The Hot Zone about viral hemorrhagic fever and was astounded at the human-animal interface of zoonotic infections. In high school, I stumbled across my parents’ copy of And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts, and was struck by the human and societal tragedy of the early years of the HIV epidemic. I witnessed that tragedy firsthand during my years as an undergraduate, when I worked as a caregiver in a small group home for people living with HIV/AIDS. Although residents were sometimes able to regain independent living, often the pre-existing deficits from HIV-associated dementia were simply too much to overcome.
During medical school and internal medicine residency, I sought to hone my skills as a physician who could care for patients with problems across any organ system. In my superb internal medicine attending physicians, I witnessed an impressive breadth of competence that I never wanted to lose and knew that my specialty must retain the ability to treat problems across any organ system. At the same time, I fell in love with the miracle of antimicrobial chemotherapy; carefully chosen and prescribed, antimicrobials could cure life-threatening illness as effectively as a scalpel. I witnessed the gradual improvement and resolution of pain among patients with vertebral infection, avoiding paraplegia from a compressive epidural abscess. I was able to counsel a terrified young man with acute HIV meningoencephalitis that careful use of antiretroviral therapy would avoid the tragedy that I had witnessed at the HIV/AIDS group home.
Now several years after completing my fellowship, I remain more enthralled than ever with the field of infectious diseases. I remain grateful for the opportunity to improve the lives of individual patients and the population, whether through helping to control infection and relieve the pain of joint infections, managing complex fungal infections during cancer chemotherapy or helping our society overcome the COVID-19 pandemic.
— Aaron J. Tande, MD
Infectious disease specialist
Associate professor of medicine
Mayo Clinic
Rochester, Minnesota