It may have been the early part of the 1960s or 1970s—I'm not very sure. Very rarely did any doctor ask for X-rays. Were there any other scanning tools? Not in my memory. The first X-ray I had was for sinusitis. The center, aptly called "Roentgen X-Rays," was located around 10 kilometers away, the closest one for me. There were very few people around and an eerie calm with huge rooms and even bigger machines. Patients were rarely aware of the hazards of X-rays. If, over two decades, someone had more than one X-ray, it was indeed rare—mostly for bone fractures, sinusitis, or tooth infections.

With the opening up of the economy, the scanning world blossomed. Sometime in the early '90s, I saw a CT scan machine for the first time, to scan the non-existent brain. The process was comfortable, though. It was maybe more than two decades later that I learned this machine used X-rays. Recently, I got a reassurance that the modern machines are faster and hence exposure to X-rays is much less. But what about poor souls like me who were put under the scanner before the so-called latest machines? Cursed souls.

And then came MRI. My first view of this was in a Hindi serial. It was so scary—a man being thrown into a cave to meet unknown demons inside. I was forced to experience this wonderful sojourn myself in the post-liberalization period. I had to be given a tranquilizer before the adamant child in me very reluctantly accepted the fate of going into the unknown world.

Now, one can find an assortment of threatening instruments with strange sounds—MRI is the worst. The noise will make you mad with its persistence and decibel level: Ultrasound, Echo, ECG, EKG (UKG—sorry, that is not part of it), CT, PET, MRI with dye, and MRI with nuclear medicines.

How do you expect a suffering patient, who is already in turmoil, to be left alone in a huge room, fed into a cavern, with chilling cold, deafening noise, and a colored dye inside, to lie still for 45 minutes? That is the time when your nose starts itching, your limbs cramp up, and you deep-breathe.

In the last quarter—economy and quarters always walk hand in hand—I have had one Ultrasound, five MRIs, one PET scan, and two CT scans. One MRI was repeated because I had moved a centimeter during the ordeal.

And the costs? They could drain even the fattest purse. I was seriously considering mortgaging my house to pay for these.

Can't the doctors just touch, feel, and poke around to diagnose?

To be continued... 7. Clinically Speaking