I recently went for a bone density test. My doctor always has to nag me into going for these tests and I always grumble about them being a waste of time.
Blah, blah, blah.
This time while I was laying there watching that big mechanical arm slowly go over my body, I started to wonder what the doctors of long ago would think of this.
A machine that tells you how strong a person’s bones are?
Wow, they probably would not believe it.
What about all the other marvels of modern medicine?
Being able to open a human chest and replace an artery in a heart would seem like a miracle to them.
I don’t know what they would think of organ transplants.
The idea of taking a kidney out of one body and putting it into another would either horrify them or amaze them or both.
Even the simple things like a blood test that tells you what your thyroid is doing would boggle their minds.
We are even winning some of the battles in the war against cancer.
These things are all so common now that we take them for granted.
The doctors of the past had none of these things to help them keep a person alive.
They did the best they could but the average life span was around 60 years back in the 1920’s according to Stats Canada.
Nowadays, there are a lot of people in their eighties still living an active life in their own homes.
Senior centres have many of their patients in their nineties and someone having a 100th birthday is not such a rare thing anymore.
This is mostly due to modern medical science making it possible for doctors to take care of their patients better.
We also have to take into account our modern lifestyle.
We don’t work nearly as hard as we used to.
Running water and electricity means that we don’t even have to haul water and wood to make our meals.
There are so many labour saving machines now that we have to do exercises to keep our muscles strong.
We also eat a lot better now than in the old days.
We can freeze meats, vegetables and fruit to have at any time of the year.
If we don’t eat as well as we should we can take vitamins to help us.
It all works together to make it easier for the doctor to do his job of keeping us healthy.
Maybe I should give my doctor a break and stop arguing with him so much.
Nah, that would just take the fun out of it!
by Lois Perepelitz
