A sudden attack of back trouble reminded me – not that I needed reminding – that my body has some mechanical issues. If I was a car I would have been recalled and repaired years ago. This spine is clearly no longer fit for purpose.
As body parts go the spine is quite important. It keeps your head on, and more or less holds the rest of the machinery together. It is also the only thing we have to distinguish us from the invertebrates that creep furtively along the ground, waiting for evolution to boost them into an upright position. To be called "spineless" is an insult, almost as serious as being told that we lack backbone. A spine is a terrible thing to lose.
So when my spine started to send up distress signals I took myself to the doctor, who did his best to conceal his boredom at this all too familiar story, and sent me to a neurologist, who tapped and twisted and asked questions and finally sent me to the hospital for an MRI. This sounds painless but twenty minutes in one of these Magnetic Resonance Imaging machines is not exactly comfortable. The word "Resonance" gives the game away. An MRI is not silent, like an X-Ray, it is LOUD like a punk band. It was like being locked in an oil drum with a whole tribe of monkeys banging on the outside. They gave me some headphones with music by Mozart, but Mozart was no match for whatever cacophonous activity was going on inside the MRI.
When the test ended I was taken to a waiting room and told that my CD would be ready soon. This was a complete surprise, and not a pleasant one. I had no wish to listen to those noises again on my home stereo system. However it turned out that the CD was in fact a DVD without the sound, and essentially I was getting the silent black and white movie version of my MRI experience.
The DVD sat around the house for a long time before I dared to watch it, and then I wished I hadn't. Actors talk about "getting inside a character," and this is exactly what happens with an MRI image. It was like a science fiction horror show, a labyrinth of dark mysterious shapes that didn't seem to have anything to do with me. Even regular photographs aren't flattering, and this was worse.
I suppose it is all part of the mania for looking at ourselves, both outside and inside. The MRI is a kind of interior selfie. It is used and over-used in endless TV hospital dramas and medical documentaries. We are supposed to marvel at how interesting the inside of the body is, and how complicated and fragile are all those systems that keep us alive and shopping. We may be wonderfully clever animals, although looking around the world you have to wonder, but we are still animals on the inside. A visit to an old-fashioned butcher's shop will confirm it.
So this kind of medical peek behind the scenes may be more disturbing than enlightening. With people, as with computers, seeing what's inside does not necessarily solve anything. I could see for myself that my lower spine was not in the best condition, and when I got the official diagnosis I was told that I had a bad back, which I have known for forty years. It's like saying that the problem with the Greek economy is that it has a bad debt. Sometimes the most sophisticated technologies tell us both more and less than we need to know.
Copyright: David Bouchier
