My wife and I are both in our late 40s as I write this. Which means, like most other middle-aged people, we've had our share of scans, procedures, operations, and surgeries. No biggie. But what fascinates me is that, because of the times we live in, we often get to see the insides of our own bodies in ways that no prior generations ever could.
Hell, at this point, Tik Tok is full of all kinds of medical-camera induced weirdness with people posting videos of their ears being cleaned; Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney made a couple of videos of themselves getting their first colonoscopies. And while they don't show the video of the entire procedure, they do show the doctor taking the guys through photos from inside their bodies to show where they had polyps, etc. I mean, we've seen inside Ryan Reynolds. Holy shit.
So, I have a photo album. Every time any doctor sticks a camera anywhere inside me1. I get a photo for my little album. I don't know why I do this. After all, the doctors both keep better records than I do and actually understand what they're looking at. I don't even write labels on the photos so I'm never really sure if that's my ear canal or my spleen. Doesn't matter as long as I've got my photo.
Sometimes, a mere camera is not enough and something has to be removed. Here in Japan, once something has been removed, they will offer to show it to you. I always say yes. Because I am a weirdo. But also because my curiosity overwhelms damn near any other feeling I am capable of having.
The thing is, while I'm not squeamish, I'm also not not-squeamish. My feeling upon seeing bits of real bodies on a surgical table, presented by the doctor in much the same way a cat will present a dead bird to a beloved owner, is one of fascinated revulsion. I examine these bits of meat almost against my own will, nodding in agreement as the doctor explains just what it is I am looking at, as if I will remember anything other than the chunk of bloody offal sitting in front of me.
Sometimes, when I talk about these things2. I get comments in reply like "You would so screwed if you lived in the past." By which, the commenter usually means that, as we all know, people lived much closer to nature in the past and you and I are weak, silly, feeble-minded people who cannot handle reality. And, while in general, that may be true, I take exception because, yeah, I could.
As much as I hate time-travel stories, I love man-out-of-time stories, where someone is displaced from their own time and takes up residence in another. There are thousands of examples, but for a classical one, think of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court where a contemporary of Twain's hits his head and wakes up in 6th century England.
In a lot of these stories, the more modern ones, at least, there's usually a line or a passage as the central protagonist realizes that they're going to have to do their own butchering or farming or crafting and that they're going to have to do it the old fashioned way. This is also sometimes used as a rural vs. urban characterization device where the rural character is more in touch with nature and therefore more accustomed to all of the above, where the city-dweller is naive and shocked to learn just how everything actually works on a farm.
And, yeah, okay, whatever. The point is that all these characters must learn to adapt. Which is just what you or I would do. Because that's what humans do. We adapt. Our one great advantage, the one that boosted us up evolutionary ladder is that we can adapt better than just about any other animal.
So, when I look at these photos of my own organs or of those deep inside some twisty passageway connecting one part of my body to another, I think about adaptation and evolution. I think about how we can overcome so many situations, how we are able to analyze and evolve to meet ever-changing demands. And I think that somehow, having this knowledge, having this visual proof of our ability to meet change head on, having this experience is how we know that, in the end, we're all going to be alright.
There is no non-cringy way to write that. I checked.
The fact that I do talk about them maybe explains why I don't get invited to dinner parties much anymore.
Damn I said we liked it when yougor personal but this is a whole nother level 😆