Did you ever like mammograms?

In the middle ages, they tortured people by stretching them out on the rack; in the new millennium, they do the opposite, compress body parts that are still attached between plates of glass. Imagine placing your nose in a vice, and just having it squeezed until it was one flat  piece of tissue that could fit into an envelope and be mailed somewhere, or perhaps your ear. Your ear is probably already flat, but, because it's attached to your head, you'd have to tilt your head in some odd positions to accommodate having that ear squeezed between two glass plates without having your brain X-rayed. So it is with breasts when getting a mammogram.

In that hospital in Chengdu, I got to freeze as if I were a dancer in a modern ballet, with my chin thrust way behind my shoulder, a shoulder that would be curled forward in one direction, while an arm was flung out dramatically in another. And then I'd change positions into another dramatically unnatural pose and let them take  more pictures.

Now, in theory I'm a great fan of mammograms, for they have saved many a dear friend's life by detecting their cancer at an early stage, including the cancer of my Belgian buddy Inge who was tagging along with me to Chengdu (partly to check out the pandas). But in practice, I've never been thrilled to contort myself in the various positions required to get any kind of image from a woman built like me. To say that I am not big-breasted is a masterpiece of understatement.

So, you should imagine the efforts of the Chinese technicians trying to rearrange my resistant body to place things just right on the glass plates before they came crushing down. Of course, they'd almost have me man-handled the right way and would order me to move in some little direction that--well, my Hanyu just isn't that good. Wo ting bu dong. I'd still be in the wrong position.

It was silly to be embarrassed by all this because there's no place for embarrassment in Chinese medical practices. You're about to get a mammogram? Just drop your shirt, right there. No gowns, no privacy. The door's ajar? It's so busy in the hall nobody's paying any attention. Not fussing about privacy is no doubt more efficient and--it's not like the doctors and medical staff don't see everything anyway.

(Back story: What they were doing was just routine follow-up that the excellent Peace Corps medical staff had ordered. I had some routine and not so routine health issues looked into, which required taking the train to Chengdu for an overnight and then being accompanied by a Peace Corps doctor to the hospitals--yes, plural--where the various procedures were done.)

Crowds of people waited in waiting rooms, including monks in orange and maroon robes, perhaps even more conspicuous than I was. I was actually accompanied by two doctors: my friend Inge as well as the youngest Peace Corps doctor, a beautiful woman with black hair streaming down her back, almost to her tiny blue jeans. She was most appropriately named Dr. Bing (sick) and could maneuver crowds and bureaucracy like a maverick.

Several specialists gave me undivided attention in a few subsequent exams, greatly impressing Inge.  Although I was seeing Western-trained physicians with excellent credentials, most of them either practice or are open (selectively) to Eastern traditions, too.  I will save for another time more discussion about that. I suspect we, the East and the West, have much to learn from each other's medical systems.