Rochester Stories 2. The American Hotel
A couple of weeks later she pulled up outside his house. It was 9AM late summer and the sun shone and its warmth infused the day. The Rochester Urologist ordered another ultrasound. And the catheter was due for its monthly replacement and check-up. Like a car service. He wanted to look inside too for signs of cancer. And this meant injection of a radioactive tracer isotope and a PET scan. I wasn’t too sure about that. The kidney condition was improving but the doctor wanted more images, graphs and numbers to trace the path forward. This is high-end search and destroy western medicine: Find the culprit, cut it out, poison it with chemo or radiate the bastard. Maybe all three. Western medicine has diagnostic tools, technicians and machines. Chinese medicine has rhythm, timbre and texture, the pulsing throb of the pulsing body under three fingers on your wrist reporting the inside story. It was a quarter century ago in this small cubicle deep in China Town,...