Cancer danger years: The ages of 40 to 70 are the danger years for many life-threatening diseases, in particular cancer. So how can you reduce the risk to you and your loved ones? You could catch the disease before you even have symptoms by getting a regular whole-body MRI. Dr Zane Sherif explains why this service is so vital.
Myself and my wife Dr Kirralee Sherif (PhD) founded Mermaid Beach Radiology so patients have the power to be proactive about their health, rather than reactive. Getting a whole-body MRI at the right time can mean the difference between life and death. We just had a male patient who was otherwise well, who came in to see us for a general health and wellbeing scan. Himself and his wife just wanted to get checked out, just to stay on top of their health. They said to me, “We service our cars once a year, why wouldn’t we service ourselves?”
FULL BODY SCAN
They had a full-body MRI scan. No abnormal pathology was found on his wife. But unfortunately, the chap had lung cancer. While this sounds like a total disaster, the disease was caught in its very early stages. He felt great and he was completely asymptomatic. The chap wasn’t coughing. He didn’t have any weight loss. This situation is what we call ‘pre-clinical.’ And this is exactly what a general check with a whole-body MRI is designed for. If he left this health situation until he was symptomatic, he could have had an entirely different outcome. A lot of the time, when you’ve got cancer, you don’t get diagnosed until symptoms like weight loss and other problems become obvious. Often at that point, it can be too late.
CANCER PROGNOSIS
Back to our lung cancer patient. Luckily, the cancer was in the very early stages, and was sitting in the middle of his lungs. If he’d left it a few more months, then the tentacles of that cancer could have wrapped themselves around critical vessels, and then it would be inoperable. But, because he chose to be proactive with his health and get our whole-body MRI scan, it was caught very early. From this point, he has many options to treat the cancer. Three months or six months down the track, he may not have had those options. Imagine hearing the words “I’m sorry, sir, it’s inoperable. Chemotherapy might extend your life for six months. ”But if we catch the disease this early on, you may have plenty of options, which could be curative ones at that.
Now, his prognosis is excellent. He’s going to survive this, and likely be cured from it. It was an isolated lung cancer. And again, it was in the middle of his lung, so it wasn’t touching any vessels, and could easily be removed by surgery.
When he was in hospital, he had a PET scan (an imaging test that allows your doctor to check for diseases in your body. The scan uses a special dye containing radioactive tracers.) His oncologist was unfamiliar with our full-body MRI screening.
When we did his whole-body MRI, we saw that there was no cancer anywhere else. His specialist sent him on for a PET scan. The PET scan came back and showed exactly what the full body MRI scan did – there was a solitary lesion with no metastasis, great correlation.
GET A SECOND OPINION
It’s always great to get a second opinion. We are the people to see if you want a second opinion! So, from our point of view, it was good that he got a PET scan. However, it didn’t offer any additional information and he has paid a bit of a radiation cost for that. Whereas the whole- body MRI does not use radiation. It uses magnets to create an image.
Our patient was a smoker. He says he smoked about five a day. Not anymore! He is in his seventies. So the cumulative effect of smoking, even small amounts of cigarettes does creep up on you! This is the perfect person to have a full-body MRI. But there are other people who live very healthy lives, and they still get afflictions like cancer, so regular non-radiation-based scanning is a great option to help get an early diagnosis.
WHY QUALITY MATTERS
We designed Mermaid Beach Radiology to be small and fabulous. We want to offer the most personalised service on the best imaging equipment science has to offer. Our fleet includes Australia’s only Spectral CT scanner in private practice and the extraordinary research grade Philips Elition X 3T MRI scanner.
A full-body MRI scan using equipment on the very cutting-edge of technology is a great tool to help stay ahead of many catastrophic health issues such as cancer. If you’re relatively well, as in you have no real symptoms, but there’s a strong family history of “badness” in your family, then get that scan. It gives a level of peace of mind. And, it can detect cancer in its early stages and deep pockets of infection. It can show a lot of other things as well, but its primary utility is cancer screening. It’s very accurate.
FULL BODY SCREENING
Full body MRI screening is common in the US. They have many private clinics where you can just turn up and get a yearly scan. We need to start doing that here in Australia. In Europe, Japan and the US, MRI is used to validate with PET and real time imaging during chemotherapy to determine if drugs are working without imposing the radiation that these other scans do.
Even if you are well, it is still a good idea to get the full-body MRI scan. If you already have a disease process going on, we can look at the burden of disease. We can monitor that burden as it gets better, or if it gets worse, or if it’s responding to treatment, or if it’s not. Adjustments in that treatment can follow.
CANCER: BEING PROACTIVE
I am a strong believer in proactive health checks. No one will mourn the loss of your motor vehicle.
Whereas there are plenty of people who will mourn the loss of your life if you stop existing. Your kids, your family, your friends, your business partners. Your health is your most valuable asset. You are no good to anyone, impaired, impaled, or dead. So, it’s really about prolonging your life and this is your responsibility, especially if you have kids or other people you look after. Your life is really only partly yours – and mostly your family’s life. I exist pretty much at this stage for my kids. So, my health is of paramount importance to me, because I can’t help anyone if I’m not around. So, why would you get a full-body MRI on a regular basis? You would get it done because you value your health above all else.
WHAT IS THE DOWNSIDE?
There is no major downside to looking after yourself in this way. There’s no radiation. The only downside to this is an hour and a half to two hours of your time and a little bit of money. But from as little as $1500 now, you could save tens of thousands of dollars in treatment down the track for something that could have been caught earlier and more importantly saved you a tonne of misery. It is money well spent.
The reason why people come to us at Mermaid Beach Radiology is not just that we use a three- tesla (3T) research grade scanner, but because the sequences we run are custom written, research enhanced and not commercially available. In America, they often do this scan on a 1.5 T MRI. So we are well ahead of the game here. But also, we have Ben Kennedy on staff. He’s our MRI and Clinical Research Director. He has a master’s degree in MRI from the University of Queensland and he is coding the machines here to do stuff that no one else in the world is doing right now. We have plenty of world-firsts at this clinic because of the machines we use, and the work Ben is doing with them. And, you can’t get this coding anywhere else. This is all highly customised, and it’s all research enhanced.
CANCER: WHY YOU, WHY NOW
After age 40 is the right time to start getting regular full-body MRI scans done. Other than childhood cancers, the cancer frequency for people age 20 to 40 is much less than older people. This is because a lot of cancers are from a lifelong toxin exposure. It’s not just one thing that usually causes cancer. It’s a multitude of things. But by the time you’re 40, you’ve had enough exposure to all of this to create the perfect storm. One cigarette doesn’t kill you. But it’s a lifelong exposure to cigarette smoke, to general pollution, chemicals in food, and in the air we breathe. The body is pretty tough and robust, but the peak of cancer starts to show its head by about the age of 40. Of course, there are younger ones, but they tend to be rarer.
There are other things we look for, outside of cancer. Recently a person came in for a full-body MRI scan. We didn’t find any cancer. But we found a large hiatus hernia on her (when your stomach bulges up into your chest through an opening in your diaphragm). So, there’s frequently other incidental pathology that we’ll find. She then said that she wondered why she had a problem with belching and bad breath! Now she knows!
Medicare – as wonderful as it is – has its limitations. If you want to be at the forefront of diagnosis, it is sometimes a user-pays model. But the beauty of this and with MRI in general, is that because you’re paying for it, you don’t need a referral, which is empowering. You can be ahead of the health curve by spending a little bit of money.
If you ever feel like you’re being blocked or not heard, you can say right, stuff it, I’m going to go and get a full-body MRI scan. And then I’ll come back to you with what the MRI finds. Very empowering stuff.
CANCER: TRUST YOURSELF
Keep in mind that no one knows your body better than you. You are hardwired to every part of your body. So, when you go to a doctor and you say, ‘this is how I am feeling’ and they say, ‘oh, it’s probably nothing’ – you don’t have to be satisfied with that answer. You can take matters into your own hands. You can drive your own health. The only cost to you is time and money. There’s no radiation or biological cost.
INVESTMENT
The cost we charge covers a large body of work. It takes about 90 to 120 minutes to acquire the data. It is another 90 minutes to put it all together. And it takes me about the guts of an hour to report it. There’s a tonne of data to sift through. So, it’s a massive body of work. Plus these machines cost millions of dollars, and you are getting access to them and the cutting-edge of diagnostics. So if you look at it as a value proposition, you are getting a great deal.
You don’t have to do much to prepare for these scans. You just have to turn up. Because you are going to be on the scanner for 90 minutes, we would just discourage lots of drinking of water or caffeine. You don’t want to fight the urge to go to the bathroom in the middle of the scan!
All you need to know is that you have to put your health first – nothing is more important.
Cancer Dogs: It seems that our fur babies are our new weapon. Doggos to the rescue!
A team of scientists has proven that dogs can truly sniff out cancer. And this canine cancer detection could lead to new non-invasive, and inexpensive ways to detect the disease. Good dog!
THE SCIENCE OF CANCER DOGS
Dogs that detect cancer may sound like science fiction. But the good news is that this could be the most exciting discovery in the cancer field for decades.
A dog’s nose is an exquisite piece of machinery, capable of smelling in parts per trillion. This makes dogs highly sensitive to odours we can’t even dream of smelling. If it was sight we were talking about, it would be like this: What you and I can see at half a kilometre, a dog could see at 5000 kms away, and see just as clearly. It’s impressive stuff.
EARLY DETECTION
Heather Junqueira is the lead researcher at BioScentDx. Her team are currently working to see if dogs really can spot cancer. For the study, Junqueira and her colleagues used a form of clicker training. They taught four beagles to distinguish between normal blood serum and samples from patients with malignant lung cancer. One beagle – named Snuggles, of course – couldn’t be convinced to stay on task, the hippie. But, the other three dogs correctly identified lung cancer samples 96.7 percent of the time. Aww cancer dogs, who’s a good boy!
“This work is very exciting because it paves the way for further research,” said Junqueira.
We should suck up to beagles, really really fast. Well, except Snuggles. All we can do with that guy is snuggle.
Junqueira isn’t the only scientist that’s getting results like this. Recent research has shown that dogs have detected lung cancer, melanoma, breast cancer and bladder cancer. While more study is needed, the initial results are incredibly exciting.
ANECDOTES
It isn’t just in the lab that dogs are showing their ability to pick up cancer. There are many incredible stories of dogs detecting cancer in their owners, including a story about a dog called Max from BBC’s Secret Life of Dogs.
Max is a Red Collie Cross normally full of energy and enthusiasm, but his owner Maureen Burns noticed that something was wrong. “I thought at the time Max was fading. He was nine and a half and I was preparing myself for losing him because he just wasn’t happy. He would come up and touch my breast with his nose and back off so desperately unhappy. There was such a sad look in his eyes.”
Maureen knew she had a small lump in her breast but her latest mammogram was clear. So she presumed all was okay. “But soon, I connected it with the dog and his odd behaviour.”
Maureen went to her local hospital but both a scan and a mammogram came back negative. It took a surgical biopsy to finally detect the cancer. Maureen had it removed and the change in Max’s behaviour was instant. “When I came home from the hospital, he was his old hyper self again. He put his nose across my breast to check where the operation had been. His eyes were happy and the change in him was instant. I owe Max so much. Now, before I go for a check-up, I get him to check me out. If he’s happy and wagging his tail, I am happy.”
Shannon
Likewise, actress Shannen Doherty has battled cancer more than once in her life. In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, she told an extraordinary story – that her dog identified her breast cancer before doctors could diagnose it. And interestingly, her story isn’t unusual. There are thousands of stories that are very similar to Shannen’s.
Cancer Dogs: MORE RESEARCH IS NEEDED
Many teams around the world are trying to work out how they can use dogs in cancer diagnosis. Dr Gianluigi Taverna is a researcher with Humanitas Research Hospital in Milan. He showed that his dogs could detect prostate cancer with an amazing 98% accuracy. Taverna and his team spent five months training two German Shepherds to detect cancer in humans by sniffing patients’ urine samples. The dogs checked over 900 people in the study. Out of these 900, the dogs were only wrong 20 times.
Said Dr. Taverna, “We have demonstrated that the use of dogs might represent a real clinical opportunity if used together with common diagnostic tools. Our standardised method is reproducible, low cost and non-invasive for the patients. This might reduce unnecessary prostate biopsies and pinpoint patients at high risk for prostate cancer.”
CANCER DOGS – MAN’S BEST FRIEND
Dogs are already used to detect impending seizure activity, and also to help mitigate meltdowns in people suffering from autism. The ability to detect cancer too means that dogs are not only amazing companions and our best friend – but could also save our lives.
Of course, there is a stack of research still to be done. But the future in this area is very bright. There are organisations which are springing up whose sole aim is to train cancer-sniffing dogs. One of these is the InSitu Foundation (dogsdetectcancer.org). They rescue dogs on death row and give them a new life, where they are loved and cared for.
Cancer-detecting dogs could be an amazing weapon against one of the biggest health scourges of our time. We knew we loved dogs for a reason, now there is a whole new reason to love them! Come sleep on our beds forever, doggos!
LINUS THE CANCER DOG
Hero Linus doing his work
This special guy, called Linus, is a 3-year-old male German Shepherd who was on death row. He was returned to a shelter three times by his previous owner. The InSitu Foundation adopted him. When he came to InSitu’s ranch, he got his first job, and it literally transformed Linus’s life. Linus went from a small jail cell to a life of love and play. Says InSitu, “He’s happy, balanced, and well adjusted, and he’s the most loving boy around! Linus loves his work, and he’s a gem on the cancer detection team.”
Linus also works on the Duke University team of breast cancer detection dogs. Read about more cancer-sniffing dogs at dogsdetectcancer.org/our-dogs
Gold Coast Private Hospital have just launched a dedicated Breast Care Centre. This means that women with breast cancer can get a range of services under one roof. And, you aren’t going it alone. A dedicated breast care nurse is there to guide the patients through the different stages of their treatment.
The centre, at the Gold Coast Private Hospital, offers on-site breast surgeons, nurses, radiographers, psychologists, physiotherapists, oncologists (medical and radiation), pathologists and a geneticist. This is to ensure everything is provided on-site.
Breast Care Nurse Sharra Artz, who has over 20 years’ experience in oncology nursing, has been fundamental in setting up the service and is essential in the patient’s breast cancer journey. “I feel very blessed in my role of being able to offer support, education, guidance, comfort and a friendly face. It must be one of the most challenging and overwhelming times in someone’s life. My role is to be by the patient’s side from the beginning. I gently guide and answer questions and ensure all the patients’ needs are being met – right into survivorship where women need a different type of emotional support.”
It is not uncommon for women to experience discomfort after their procedures. Hence, the hospital has created a nurturing take-home care pack. Partnering with local businesses, the pack includes deodorant paste from Beautiful Batches, lip balm from A Bit Hippy, healing balms and wound care from Great Health Company and breast pillows from St James Church sewing group.
Breast Cancer Patient Tani Nokes said, “I feel really blessed with the support l got from the hospital and was fortunate to get an early diagnosis. I tell everyone I know to get an ultrasound now. Although it may sound strange, but it was a wonderful experience at what could have been a very stressful time. I had no idea what to expect and I was able to contact Nurse Sharra at any time of the day or night, I didn’t have to worry about a thing.”
Under the care of Breast Surgeon Heidi Peverill, Tani had a biopsy that found a small tumour. She did not need chemotherapy, and started Radiation Oncology with Dr Dominic Lunn.
The Breast Care Centre is committed to providing superior breast care in one location. Diagnostic, imaging and treatment schedules are all part of the service.
Healthscope’s Gold Coast Private Hospital owns and operates the centre. They are leaders in bringing together the expertise of a multidisciplinary team. This particular team specialises in the treatment of benign and malignant cancers. Also, it offers breast implant safety checks and ultrasounds.
The Breast Care Centre is supported by onsite chemotherapy services including a Day Infusion Centre and Radiation Oncology. This provides patients with the highest quality care in both medical and emotional support. ■
CT scan needed? At Mermaid Beach, there is a clinic which is the only private practice in Australia with new Spectral CT Scanner. Here’s what that means for you.
There is now a technology so innovative and disruptive, that it promises to turn medicine on its head. It is called Spectral CT and it is a revolution in the diagnosis game. This is the sharp edge of medicine.
The long name of the kit is the Philips IQon Elite Spectral CT. Or, Spectral CT for short. Mermaid Beach Radiology is the only private radiology clinic in all of Australia to have one. It can see inside you like no other machine on the market while having an ultra-low radiation dose. It can diagnose cancer you don’t even know you have, even before you feel sick.
A patient getting a CT scan
Just when you think things couldn’t get better for patient care – in the room next door is the Philips Ingenia Elition 3.0T X wide bore research[1]grade MRI. There are only 3 of these top-of-the[1]line MRI machines in private practice in Australia (the other two are in Western Australia).
Entrepreneurial Minds at Work
Dr. Zane Sherif is the brilliant mind behind the futuristic clinic. He’s a radiologist with a passion for technology and what it can do in the medical field. Alongside his wife, Dr. Kirralee Sherif, who herself has a Ph.D. in Engineering, Zane has opened Mermaid Beach Radiology. They are hoping that people of the Gold Coast (and much farther afield) will understand just what a gift it is to have access to these cutting-edge machines. He said, “Our bar for machine selection was, ‘what would we want to have ourselves, our kids, our loved ones scanned on?’”
A glimpse of the CT scan machine
Zane tells us about a recent case of his. “A patient came into use with a forearm issue. He’d been living with forearm pain for years and had seen multiple specialists. He was in relentless pain that no one was able to get on top of. He has been prescribed antipsychotics and antidepressants and all sorts of things. Nothing worked. He had accepted that he may have to amputate his arm to gain relief. Finally, he found us.
“Ben Kennedy, the MRI Clinical and Research Director, did his magic and finally, the patient had a diagnosis. There was a problem with his radial nerve. The radial nerve in our arm goes through a little tunnel, just off the bone. For him, that tunnel was too tight and it was inflaming the nerve. But you could not see it on any other scan until now.
“Ben was able to get an entirely new view of the nerve. He could trace its path through that tunnel. He could see that the nerve was thicker and brighter, but only in the tunnel. So we knew that it was getting stenosed. Now that we knew the problem, we could treat it. Within hours, we injected the area with some Cortisone, and for the first time in years, the patient had no pain. The Cortisone shrinks down the swelling around the nerve and could last for years, if not forever. This kind of case isn’t unusual, it happens here on a daily basis.”
Rise of Spectral CT Scanners in Queensland
In South East Queensland, there are six Spectral scanners in public hospitals. The hospitals have a much bigger budget to purchase the near two-million-dollar machines. They always have to have the best diagnostic tools. But there’s a waiting list and you may only get to use it after you have run the gauntlet of lower-end machines. And usually, you need to be a hospital inpatient. By then, precious time has passed.
Then there’s the machine in Mermaid Beach Radiology, which is a private clinic. In all of the other radiology clinics in Australia, there are a grand total of zero Spectral CT scanners.
As a private business, Zane and Kirralee had to answer the business case for spending so much money on one machine. Says Zane, “This piece of machinery is 10 times the cost of some CT scanners. An entry-level CT scanner costs about $200,000. The Spectral CT costs nearly two million dollars. But this machine takes a massive leap when it comes to diagnostic power. It is like comparing the phone that you used 15 years ago to the one you’re using now. We took a gamble because the medical community needs to do better for patients.”
Zane said that he wanted to move to Spectral CT technology when he worked for other radiology companies. “I was literally laughed out of the building. And yet… this machine is an absolute diagnostic monster. I wanted my patients to have access to this. So I said, right, I’ll buy it myself.”
And Mermaid Beach Radiology was born. Zane says the Spectral CT images give the radiologists diagnostic confidence in what we are seeing. “A lot of the time you might see something on a lower-end machine, and you really have no idea what it is. However, with the Spectral CT, we have more diagnostic confidence. The images are just far superior to what’s out there. I’m not saying we can answer every question, but we have the best tools known to science to help answer the more complex medical dilemmas.
Importance of High-Quality Scanners
“It does not matter how good a radiologist is if their tools are poor. If you’re looking through foggy glasses, all you’re going to see is fog. They could be an Einstein-level of intellect, but it is irrelevant. They can only report what they see, and if they can’t see it, they can’t diagnose it. But every single day, we are seeing pathology in patient’s Spectral CT scans that have not been seen using an older technology.
“There isn’t a day I’m not making a phone call to a referring doctor on a new case of unknown cancer or some other obscure diagnosis. I’ve never made so many phone calls in my career. We have a lot of patients come in here who know there is something wrong and haven’t yet been able to get a diagnosis. There was one gentleman who had five scans in the last six months with no answer. It was not until he got on the Spectral CT that we could see that he had cancer of his chest wall.”
Kirralee says, “There are times Zane shows me scans done on non-Spectral scanners, and you just cannot see cancer, even when you know where to look, we can’t see it. Then he’s like, ‘Have a look at this.’ And the cancer is so bright and unmissable.”
Zane says it is so important to be diagnosed early. “With modern medicine, our best chance at altering the course of a disease is in the early stages. Once it is chronic, forget it. The horse has bolted. You can’t unscramble an egg. Spectral CT is the future of radiology. In five years, everyone will have a Spectral scanner. But at the moment, it’s just Mermaid Beach Radiology who are offering it. We wanted to be an early adopter because this machine is your best shot.”
Holistic Medicine
Kirralee Sherif, the wife of Zane, is passionate about the experience the patient has at Mermaid Beach Radiology. As a working mother of four young children, she has the usual juggle of family and working life. But being busy doesn’t diminish her desire for the patient to feel cared for when they need it. She is intensely convinced that the patient journey is paramount and has made it her life’s work. “I had imaging done myself between my second third child. I had some really awful news, and I was sitting in a clinic in Sydney bawling my eyes out in the hallway, as everyone’s going past getting their images done. I was so alone and I just didn’t want anyone to ever feel the way I did that day. We designed this clinic so that the patient has a much better journey than that.”
The living wall, which sits behind the reception desk designed by local artist Lisa De Boer
The clinic has a dedicated room in case someone needs to hear bad news and two full-time nurses. The patient comfort room has a heated blanket, a TV, and if someone needs time with Zane to discuss a diagnosis or if they just need time with the nurse, they can have this room. It’s also a recovery room, and an observation room too.”
The Ambiance of Mermaid Radiology
When you walk into the clinic, it has an art gallery vibe. A living wall, looking like a tropical rainforest, in reception is beguiling, and unexpected. It is properly beautiful. Green life grows in a lot of places in the clinic. Says Kirralee, “All the plants in reception and throughout the building are real. There’s a lot to be said about the effects of greenery on health. We want our patients to feel as calm and as comfortable as possible – like they’re coming into a resort. It is hard enough coming into a place like this, let alone when it’s all clinical and scary.”
It is not even scary for kids. A kiddie room with a short-throw projector plays movies for the children who are waiting. When we were there, some kids were kicking back on the beanbags, watching their favorite show.
Kirralee and Zane are both passionate about the environment. Amazingly, Mermaid Beach Radiology is becoming a carbon-neutral practice, which is an excellent achievement for such a young practice. Says Kirralee, “I keep trying to instill in my children that we are here to make a positive impact. You have to treat the planet and all the living things on it with respect, and we want to model that in our work environment, as well.”
Kirralee and Zane are also on the same page with supporting local artists. “We used local suppliers where we possibly could as well. The front desk is all done by a local artist, Lisa De Boer. Sean Scott is a well-known photographer based in Burleigh. We’ve used his images all around the clinic and backlit them. We love the Gold Coast and as a family-run practice, we want the clinic to celebrate that.
“Zane has worked for other radiology companies. But we wanted to do things differently. We have a more patient-based focus. We aren’t about meeting strict goals. We just want to make sure that the patients have the best imaging journey that they can. If there’s something that can be done on the day, Zane will call the patient’s doctor and progress their imaging further. If injections are required, it can be done there and then, rather than the time-wasting to-ing and fro-ing with other doctors. That all adds to stress and pushes costs up as well.”
Radiology Expertise
Ben Kennedy is a world-renowned MRI scientist and researcher, according to Kirralee. He was formerly head of the MRI modality with the QScan group. When we go to see the MRI in action, he says, “Want to see something cool?”
We always want to see something cool. He says, “You want to see real-life cerebrospinal fluid flowing through the brain?” He points to the screen. “That’s CSF flowing in and out of the cerebral aqueduct.” It was amazing to see it live. It looked like tomato sauce being squeezed repeatedly through a hose.
Yep. We all stood there and watched spinal fluid flowing through the brain. It was fascinating. The question was asked, “Do all of our bodies do that?” Ben answered, “I hope so.”
MRI is typically considered the most sophisticated imaging tool in radiology. As a pre‑emptive strike, or as a way to get a fast, accurate, early diagnosis, the value for money using MRI is incredible. But even if you feel fit and well but just want peace of mind that there is nothing dark brewing, you can waltz in and get an MRI scan with no radiation.
Says Zane, “You can wake up one day and say, ‘I’m curious what my brain looks like today. I want to go get an MRI.’ And just get it done. We have had people who’ve just come in and just chosen to have a full-body screening for cancer on the MRI. And we’ve almost found something on every one of them. The pick-up rate is huge. We are now the go-to place for doctors on the Gold Coast who want to get themselves and their kids checked out.”
Going Off-Piste
The conventional route of diagnosis is not one Zane is a fan of. “If you’re sick, you don’t wake up one day going, ‘Right, I’m going to go see my doc today. I hope he/she starts me off on this process with the worst available tests.’ But that’s exactly what happens. You go and see your doctor, sick.
You’ll almost always start off with an X-ray which is a 125-year-old technology. Then you might get to an ultrasound. You will rarely get to a CT, and almost never get to an MRI. By the time that has happened, it could be too late. Ask anyone, what is the best diagnostic camera in medicine? Everyone will say MRI. Yet it’s the last thought, not the first thought in the investigative process. Which is bonkers.”
While Medicare will not refund the cost of an MRI scan, which starts at $360, it is still very much worth the price. Says Zane, “Medicare is a great safety net for the less privileged. But it has also forced our thinking towards the idea that we should never put our hand in our pocket when it comes to health care. That is just the wrong mentality.”
It is suspected that the monkey in question has a very serious case of fluffyitis
There’s no better way to spend your money than on your health, so you will be around for your loved ones for a long time. You spend similar amounts of money on your hair, a good meal, a couple of bottles of wine. You ARE worth it. In fact, we are all worth it. And in this case, technology is very definitely our friend. ■
How to Make an Appointment
Mermaid Beach Radiology offers Wide Bore 3T MRI, Spectral CT, Cone Beam CT, Ultrasound, X-Ray, biopsies, and all pain relief injections all using the very latest technology. You can make an appointment for any of these, and they accept referrals from all over Australia.
Esprit de Vie Wellness Club is causing a stir. They have become very popular with the Gold Coast’s Silvers. The club runs weekly sessions at the Italian Club (8 Fairway Drive Clear Island Waters) with social team games and activities.
The Esprit de Vie Wellness Club also hosts regular social events like YOT Club Broadwater cruises, wine tours, brunches and so much more where friendships can be built.
Says Janice Walker, a Wellness Club Member, “It’s the best thing I’ve done since moving to the Gold Coast! I’ve made some lovely friends! I know I’m not alone in saying that!”
Wendy Geer, another Wellness Club regular, adds, “It’s the best place on the Gold Coast to meet some friends and have some wonderful events.”
Esprit de Vie Wellness Club Activities
Esprit de Vie love to use the old Elvis line “A little less conversation, a little more action” to describe what happens in their Wellness Clubs. Sessions are busy, interactive, full of laughter and fun – but all with a purpose.
Backed by the latest science, each session also keeps a subtle focus on memory, attention, cognitive function, physical and social health to ensure each and every participant’s maximum benefit.
One of Australia’s Favourite TV personalities, Denise Drysdale, pops down regularly to participate. Denise even ran a fun Go-Go dancing session recently to complement something she first did in 1966 when she opened Australia’s first Go-Go dancing school. ■
Interested? It is open to everyone, and it is $20 per session with a light meal and beverage included. Call 1300 4218 00 to book your complimentary first session.
Being well by being social is a fantastic way to look at life. But, you can also stay on top of your health by being proactive medically too. Have you ever considered having regular full-body MRI scans? This type of full body scan, done annually, can make all the difference in a diagnosis. Click here for more information.
