Worth a thousand words

Previously on MondoBlahBlah...
Previous to that on MondoBlahBlah...
Even more previously than that on MondoBlahBlah...

All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up. And when I say close, I mean CLOSE. I'm talkin' endorectal close. Portraiture has changed quite a lot since I worked at the Sears Portrait Studio. Nowadays you go in for a few 8x10 glossies and you come out a set of soft tissue images and a full body bone scan. Well, maybe it wasn't Sears, now that I think of it.

Does this scan make my prostate look fat?

I have never been particularly attentive to my body. In fact I spent the first third of my life doing everything possible to wreck it. I have never even been particularly interested in the external workings of the corpus delecti, but now that my physiology is being scrutinized by lab-coated disciples of a variety of medical disciplines, I am compelled to learn about some of its functions and to actually have a look under the hood. Overcoming my natural tendency to gag at images of internal anatomy, I have recently spent some time pouring over images of myself. They are really quite lovely. Not attractive, not particularly pretty, but kind of evocative and just sort of abstract way. That they were prompted by the search for malformed cells that could threaten to kill me, and that some of them actually feature said cells makes them all the more absorbing to me. Am I looking at my cause of death?

I ought to have my head examined. 

Wait! I have had my head examined. I've had everything examined. Apparently once cancer escapes the prostate, it works its way through the adjoining lymph nodes and bee lines for the bones. So periodic bone scans will be part of my life from now on. Why they're looking for prostate cancer all the way up in my skull is a bit of a mystery, but I guess they aren't willing to just take my word that I haven't had my head up my ass recently. In any case, here you can see Bartlebones' bones...

Maybe I'm confused about the location of the prostate...

I have no earthly idea what specific, useful information was gleaned from any of these photos, other than the conclusion that the cancer had not spread to either lymph nodes or bones. And for that, I am quite happy, as evidenced by this photo of my hams.

Happy, happy, joy, joy...

Curious about how it turned out..? Read on...