‘I learned to say radiologist when I was no more than 5’

In a book written for popular audiences, a board-certified pediatrician and radiologist’s daughter describes her lifelong affinity for radiology as perhaps only she could.

The inner workings of the human body reveal themselves in medical imaging, and this is “as astonishing as animals that can talk,” the doctor/author writes. “You can look at the black shadows on a plastic film and know something of a person’s history. You might find the silent first blush of disease and read his fate. All without wielding a scalpel.”

The practitioner behind the words is Sutter Health’s Claire Unis, MD, MFA (concentration: creative writing), who also runs a wellness program for physicians called “Literature in Medicine.”

The book is Balance Pedal Breathe: A Journey Through Medical School. The blog KevinMD.com posted an excerpt Sept. 9.

Excerpt of the excerpt:

I was very young the first time I kneeled on my father’s desk chair and tried to copy a skeleton onto a small notepad inscribed with his name. I learned to say ‘radiologist’ when I was no more than 5, around the same time I learned the word ‘physician.’ Those films were part of the symbols that made up the milieu of my father in my early life: cigars, a Degas print of ballet dancers, his bushy black beard, seafoam-green hospital scrubs, and glowing white ribcages stuck to a lightbox. He looked inside and saw things no one else could see. He spoke long words into a microphone on his desk, in a serious tone of voice, and I always had the sense that something significant was happening.”