CT Scans can be hazardous to your health

Seen on http://www.mercola.com/2001/may/30/ct_scan.htm

Regulators at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are concerned that the growing popularity of high-tech computerized body imaging for health screening could be exposing the public to risky levels of radiation.

Recent advances in computerized tomography (CT) technology have increased the efficiency and lowered the price of the scans. The changes have helped spawn a new nationwide industry of unregulated boutique clinics where patients pay $300 to $500 of their own money to get CT scans not for diagnosis, but for regular health screening.

The agency is worried that easily available screening with CT has the potential of exposing patients to unhealthy repeat doses of the X-ray radiation the machines use to form images. While FDA evaluates the safety and effectiveness of CT scanners and other medical devices for regular use, it has no power to regulate how those machines are used once they reach doctors offices.

Whole-body scans require higher doses of the X-ray radiation CT scanners use to make images. As more and more people visit clinics to be screened for lung cancer, heart disease and other ailments, they could be absorbing more radiation more often than the FDA originally intended.

It's an open free-for-all in many communities. There is a perception by the public that CT scanning is a benign thing.

The average whole-body CT scan delivers 0.2 to 2.0 rads of radiation, depending on the size of the patient's body. Studies of Japanese survivors of the US atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WWII linked an increased risk of cancer to lifetime cumulative exposures of 5 to 20 rads.

At 2 rads per exam, we're not far from potentially dangerous radiation doses.

Most doctors who work with CT scanners know to monitor the cumulative radiation doses patients receive. Professional societies also put out guidelines designed to promote the safe and effective use of the machines. But the self-pay nature of many CT boutiques allows patients to visit several different clinics as often as they like.

A Good Result

The last time I wrote it was about having that "lovely" experience of going into the hospital to have someone look at my insides once again.

Well, the news was good this time, or to use the phrase applied in my documentation, 'very encouraging'. I am not sure who this comment was aimed at the doctor who referred me, the person undertaking the examination or me for some reason. Regardless of all this - at least the news was not what I dreaded - namely that there was a problem with my colon.

Still I am not out of the woods yet, it might well be that the iron deficiency is a sign of something else that is dreadful. Let's wait and see.

The experience of going to the hospital provided one bright moment before everything went black and this was the finding that one of the lovely young nurses who had taken care of me in the ward when I was recovering from my operation had transferred to this new job and was going to have the dubious delight of attending to yet another part of my anatomy. It was nice to have a sense of 'old home week' although I have to say I would prefer it if I did not see people in the hospital for any reason other that social.

Thursday

Well, next Thursday is the day when I can look forward to another round of people sticking large black hoses where the sun normally does not shine and looking into my well being.

The procedure is not painful nor distressing as they are careful to make sure that we have no memory of what happens. The preparation is disgusting - insipid foods for two days and then nothing but liquids for the next day with some horrible stuff that makes you purge everything to leave a nice clean colon to be looked at.

Well, I can cope with all this - but keep up the prayers folks because having another tumor is not what I would like to see.

Some interesting news

I sometimes wonder whether it is a good idea to go and visit a doctor. Every time that I attend the surgery I am prompted with attendance at a new test and new results that reveal something new and disturbing.

The last of my attendances at the GP was caused by a sore shoulder and some questions about the blood tests that have been conducted.

What an idiot I must be to raise questions.

The next thing I know I am off for x rays and an ultrasound and some more intensive blood tests.

What do they find?

Well in the first place a nice torn ligament in the shoulder. Requires more tests like an MRI and then perhaps surgery depending on the damage. Lovely! Another fortune in body analysis and repairs.

Then there is the blood test. No news is good news I always say and in this case I am right again. The test reports that I have low iron in my blood. OK so what does this mean? Take supplements? Well, not necessarily, it could mean I have bowel cancer.

WONDERFUL - as if oesophageal cancer was not enough I now have to find out if I am to enjoy something else as well.

So I go home to think ruefully about what is happening to my life and my body and the doctor goes off on a well earned weekend with the family suggesting that in the next week she will try and make arrangements for a gastroscopy to find out whether I am bleeding internally somewhere and whether that is cancer or not.

That of course leaves me with the anxiety and a feeling of total helplessness as I wait for their intervention.

Ain't the world grand?

Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop

I have just had the devastating news that one does not want to get - my friend's father has metastases!

I am devastated for this friend and for his family. I know exactly what it feels like to have the tests and to wait for the results I know what if feels like when the doctor tries to avoid your eyes and tell you that he/she has found some results that are most unpleasant. I know what if feels like to know with considerable certainty that you are a walking dead person.

In some ways it is a blessing in disguise. Once you have been diagnosed for cancer it is not at present possible to believe anyone who says, 'congratulations, the operation was a success and you are cured." Rather it is the situation that in most instances you can believe the phrase, 'congratulations, we have staved off death for a period, we don't know for how long but we are hoping for the best. '

I am absolutely sure that this gives the doctors who make the statement a considerable sense of triumph and warmth and a sense of purpose achieved.

I know that for loved ones it provides them with the opportunity to hope and to thank God for a little more time with that person. For the individual with the illness it is a time for waiting for the other shoe to drop.

On the one hand, it is nice to know that for the time being life can return to some level of normalcy. After all to look at, one is OK. The various parts of the body work and get the job done day after day. One is able to eat, drink sleep and perform most of the functions which are required.

On the other, it feels as though one is on death row waiting for the inevitable schedule for execution and with no hope of a reprieve.

I have recently had some postings from people who are still in the state of anger over the news that their husband, son, daughter has cancer.

Anger? Anger with whom?

With an unjust God who seems to reward evil people with long and health lives while those of the loved one is being cut short? Anger with the people in the world who get rich pumping chemicals into our food chain and into the air we breathe and the water that we drink just to make another million or so that they can't spend in their life time? Angry with the governments that have a pandemic on their hands with one in three people succumbing to cancer and who have not found a cure? Angry with all of those people who are daily inventing 'treatments' and getting rich instead of finding a cure?

I guess there are a lot of people to be angry with. Indeed for many of us, when we think back on the abuse we have been responsible for by smoking, by not taking exercise, by . . . we can also be angry with ourselves.

What's the point? Each minute that we spend being angry is another minute that we cannot enjoy being alive. Each angry outburst is merely an exercise in frustration.

Live life for as long as you have and consign worry to the dustbin. Bad news will come soon enough and you need your energy to cope with it when it does.