Return to Homelessness

When a physician driven by compassion takes to the streets of downtown Los Angeles to anonymously live among the homeless community he has been treating for years, he unexpectedly learns lessons beyond his imagination while making relationships that shape him as both a doctor and a human being. Return to Homelessness is a nonlinear story about a physician's time on the streets after growing up homeless himself in a Beirut refugee camp. Sometimes, life's most meaningful lessons happen outside the walls of medical school.

Return to Homelessness is a memoir by Dr. Vartan Tachdjian, a ninety-year-old physician who shares his journey from growing up homeless to a lifelong commitment of helping the needy. Tachdjian recounts the story of how he went from fighting for an education to becoming a physician and his battle to get housing for himself, his family, and the homeless individuals he treated. Written as a first-person narrative novel, the story opens up with the three homeless days and nights spent without his doctor's lab coat on Los Angeles's skid row, exchanging life experiences with his homeless patient Benny. He and Benny develop a friendship through the years and realize how fragile life's turns can be. From the streets and from the heart, Return to Homelessness is an inspirational memoir of one physician's journey to improve the homeless plight and the world.