Beauty is only skin deep

Then the wise guy argued, 'who the hell wants to see the inside?'. I agree. For past several weeks I have been going through one CT (computed tomography for you medically unsound people) scan a week treatment. The mechanism is fairly simple. They give you a colorful drug to drink and then scan the flow of that drug throughout the body using spiral X-rays. End result: a nice set of pictures printed on black(!) film showing your interiors. This is the time for men and women to blush. Every other doctor I visit, starts looking at these interiors of mine. It is embarassing, makes you feel like in slave market and the buyer is checking out your interiors. Maybe dancing girls, more appropriate. Another oncologist, I was talking to, said that these are the most beautiful pictures. Well, the beauty is in the eye of beholder. For me, I am happy with my bald head and little bit of pot belly, I do not want to see what is inside. Liver tumors or not.

Today's CT scan was to find out if I had a cardiac problem too. I was just afraid that I might be promoted from a rank brigadier to general (one star to two stars - cancer and heart disease both). It turned out my promotion is long way off, all my arteries in and around heart are performing fine (even though that was the youngest and shapely doctor around!). These images are way too detailed, some times more uncomfortably so. For example, one of the reports said, my bowels were covered due to gas. This is absolute invasion of privacy. You literally die many deaths (was is Keats?) when some doctor in broad light is looking at those films and discussing in front of all of your family members how your kidneys are in nice shape. Thankfully we do not go beyond liver most of the times, where I have star attraction (for now). I wouldn't want another pretty young doctor making guesses about life on planets beyond liver ('do you see the small thing there?'.. 'oookay doctor, I did not come here for checking that..'). The eMedicine site describes that CT scan is just like slicing the bread and looking inside it (it helps doctors to look inside your body, soft tissue and all!). Go figure what your upper body slice is going to look like. I tell you from experience, it is not a pretty picture. Then there are, of course, bone scans with radioactive isotopes. Besides the contrasts that they use, wow amazing! These drugs really give you out of body experience in 2 minutes or less (LSD anybody?).

The doctor was very detailed in explaining the pains and after effects, e.g. I might vomit or die of suffocation. Your photographer in studio does not warn you, these guys do (very professional!). Talk of advancement in clinical procedures. To be fair, Angiography was done quickly and the drug was injected through IV so no pain. I recall the days when my brother went through these procedures, he invariably had to cut his thigh every single time doctor felt like looking at his heart.

So one more digital image in collection and lot of money less we progress on our path of medical diagnosis. My wife was complaining that doctors these days depend more on circumstantial evidence than actual physical checking. I tried to convince her that these are complimentary techniques (and that we already landed a man on moon, however far it may appear to a naked eye), but no avail. These wanna-be doctors are more dangerous than the original one's.

For the moment at least, I am happy that I do not have blocked arteries like many others on this planet do (and imagine all the fuss they make about heart attacks!). In pure competetion, we cancer patients can take on these heart disease guys (sissies) any day. We have bigger terms like 'metastases', 'carcinoma' and what not, the heart patients have to live with cardiac arrest (heart attack) and 'blocked arteries'. Poor chaps. Even the treatment is a wash-out ('change in life style'). C'mon what is treatment in that? I would like to change my life style every other day. Cancer treatment, on the other hand, requires chemotherapy or operation. It changes your face (literally!) and life changes automatically. You 'survive' the cancer, you can write a book and participate in celebrating marathon. Who would buy a book by heart disease survivor (there are just too many of them out there)? And seriously how many heart patients can plan to run marathon? In my opinion the medical fraternity should wake up to the reality and start treating cancer patients with more respect they deserve. (Cardiac department, bah! why would you need that?). There are just too many inequalities in this world.

On the other hand, I was going to ask about few more things that did not seem right in my body in the CT scan. However, I was afraid it might lead to another discovery (in style my liver tumor) and would put me on bed for rest of the year. For example, I am almost certain that I am missing one of the ribs on left side, but telling this to the doctor had its own risk... and what if insurance company rejected the claim under 'pre-existing' condition (a.k.a. manufacturing defect)? I learnt my lesson and kept quiet.

Thinking it over, I am planning to spend little more time on looking at the cover and not inwards ('Do not look inwards', would be my message to the young generation, 'the picture is not pretty and you probably have a tumor in stomach!'). Hence I plan to spend more time on my tan, pay more attention to my facial, hair-cut and ever glowing skin , after all that is where beauty is.