From the publisher/Arnold G. York
Recently I took the plunge into 21st century medicine and went in for a full body scan. I must confess the old primitive demons kept whispering into my ear: Don’t go. You don’t really want to know. Suppose they find something?
But the saner side of my nature prevailed because I’m old enough to know what you don’t know really can kill you. Several of my friends have had serious diseases and early detection really does work, or at least substantially increases your odds of survival.
But what I was afraid of wasn’t really some killer disease. What was even scarier was the thought they would find a bunch of little things and some doc would come out and say this is what you’ve got to do. “You’ve got to cut out the fats. You gotta lose 30 pounds. You gotta stop drinking wine. You gotta walk an hour every day. You gotta stop beating up on politicians and the Coastal Commission because it’s bad for your psyche and also your digestion.” In other words, cut back on everything that that makes life fun.
After much hesitation, and determination to carry through a New Year’s resolution that was gnawing at me, I drove to Beverly Hills to get it done. I didn’t know what to expect. I had an MRI in the past and at that time I had the feeling that my body was being shoved head first into a washing machine. Even though I’m not the least bit claustrophobic, an MRI would certainly be torture for any one who was. In the middle of an old MRI, it typically always sounded like someone hit the side of the machine with a sledgehammer and the sound resonated in the machine and into the fillings in your teeth.
That was old technology, which was like a Model T compared to today’s BMW.
The new stuff is sports car sleek. In all of 10-12 minutes, they pass you back and forth under a narrow electronic horseshoe that takes pictures of you and the computer marries them all together, seamlessly into your own CD. Sort of-this is your life, Charlie Brown.
Twenty minutes later you’re sitting in front of a monitor next to the radiologist, about to hear the news, which by this time you fear is, at a minimum, fatal. No matter how healthy you feel, no matter how sophisticated your medical knowledge, there is a nanosecond before the doctor speaks that is always a moment of terror.
And the verdict is … “You’re fine, Arnold.”
Well, a heavenly chorus breaks into song and then you feel a little bit silly. After all, I always knew I was fine, didn’t I? It’s strange that at some level we’re all still very primitive. It’s our modern equivalent of voodoo but a very medically sophisticated high-tech voodoo. Until the radiologist pronounces the magic words you’re fine, you’re not really fine.
Perhaps it’s the machine. We all believe in machines and this is among the latest. I understand the machine they use is a form of very high-tech computerized tomography, and with improvements in technology they can find smaller and smaller problems, earlier and earlier. They can measure coronary artery calcium deposits, screen your lungs, your internal organs, check your spine and measure bone mineral density, and a number of other things.
The fun is when you get the CD of your scan, and take it home to play it in your computer. You put in your CD and go through your body slice by slice, from multiple views. It sort of reminds you of the movie “Fantastic Voyage” where the antibodies all attacked Raquel Welch’s chest, but not quite that sexy.
At this point I guess I should have a medical disclaimer before I get letters. Machines don’t diagnose, doctors do. No matter how good the technology, someone has to analyze and interpret it. There really are no magic bullets. Unfortunately, many of the technologies are still very invasive, but that’s changing.
Having said that, I know we live in an amazing time. The genome project and other research are breaking through all over. We may yet see killer diseases; like cancer and AIDS become chronic diseases, if not curable, at least controllable. Surgery is being done microscopically through inch-sized incisions and detection equipment is improving geometrically.
So go for it.
There are a number of places that do the scanning. I had it done at CT Screening International in Beverly Hills. So check it out at ct.screening.com.