Soft-Tissue Screenings

3 millimeters of tissue. Before the emergence of X-ray imaging in 1875, to look deeper than the skin would have been no easier than looking past 3 feet of steel. For most of history that 3 millimeter veil was unpierceable save for surgery, or autopsy.

The X-ray machine was a leap unprecedented in medicine, but still it failed to fully image the most vulnerable, and often dangerously afflicted portions of a patient’s person. Soft tissue imaging is a crucial, irreplaceable tool in identifying: cancers, organ health, neonatal safety, internal hemorrhaging… The list continues. Ultrasounds, CAT scans, MRIs; for thousands of years looking within a patient was an inconceivable fantasy. Today most of us can find such services within a 30 minute drive. Most of us.

For Tali Astel, such care was unattainable. Tali was a working mother of 2, gainfully employed as an event caterer after her husband's death. She picked her kids up each day after school, and helped construct playground equipment behind her apartment most weekends. Her employee health coverage had excellent rates for the services she needed, dental and ophthalmology visits for the kids, regular HMO checkups for all of them… but it didn’t cover everything.

Tali began to feel stinging, a pain running from her abdomen to her back. She had been working long hours, so she brushed it off at first. Then one night around the dinner table, she couldn’t eat. The pain was so severe when swallowing and after meals that she began eating less and less. She felt feverish, nauseous, pummeled. Tali’s pain continued to worsen, and so she scheduled an appointment with her primary care physician. He guided her through some abdominal palpations, drew blood, and ordered an ultrasound, perfect diagnostic procedure. But for one caveat, Tali couldn’t afford the ultrasound.

Her employee coverage demanded a large deductible she couldn’t afford, and she didn’t qualify for Medicaid. Without the ultrasound her physician could neither diagnose nor locate the problem, and so Tali faced the same barrier to her health as had the patients of centuries past. 

It’s an untenable situation. To need an otherwise easily accessible, life-saving diagnostic tool, only to be foiled by a few hundred dollars. Tali’s story is far too common for comfort, though her conclusion does hold some hope. Ms. Astel heard from a friend about our Mobile Medicine unit, and took a detour home from work one evening. She gave a brief medical history, described her symptoms, and underwent a mobile ultrasound. 30 minutes after she arrived she had her answer, gallstones, with a complication of pancreatitis. That one visit changed a life. Tali was able to bring her diagnosis back to her PCP, get confirmation, and go under for surgery. 

Access to soft tissue imaging is nothing less than crucial to patient health. Overcoming that 3 millimeter block can mean the difference between life and death. Yet many in our community will never receive diagnosis or treatment for their subdermal ailments, and of those that do, some may do so too late. The Wyandotte Clinic provides otherwise impossible opportunities to monitor and treat our community’s least served patients, day by day making more stories like Tali’s end happily. If you need medical assistance, please reach out at 734-555-3938. We’re here to listen, and ready to help, no matter what.