Local High School Essay Contest

In November 2005, George S. Bisset III, MD, and the Department of Radiology at Duke University Medical Center hosted a day-long tour for 100 high school juniors and seniors from around the Triangle.

As part of their participation, students were encouraged to submit an essay regarding their experience and newfound understanding of the radiologic field.

In response to the essay topic of “radiology’s significance in the community,” we are pleased to announce that Lianne Gonsalves, a student at Cary Academy, is the winner of the contest and $1,000 prize. Rinchen Lama, a student at Leesville Road High School, is the first runner-up and recipient of $500.

Click the student’s name to read the essay.

Lianne Gonsalves, Cary Academy (Winner)
Rinchen Lama, Leesville Road High School (First Runner-up)

Pictured from left to right: George S. Bisset III, MD, Lianne Gonsalves of Cary Academy, and Carl E. Ravin, MD (Chair, Duke Department of Radiology)

By Lianne Gonsalves, Cary Academy (Winner)

Until a little over one month ago, I was quite clueless about radiology. My knowledge of the field consisted of vague ideas and images from movies, involving x-rays and donut-shaped machines. The machines took pictures while making whirring and clicking noises and a few days later, I could be staring at a picture of my teeth, pelvis, or any other assorted bone or tissue.

As for the radiologists, they were doctors, working in the bowels of hospitals, living with the deep-seated worry of being exposed to too much radiation. They tacked x-rays up to bright lights and could find a hairline fracture in a fraction of a second.

Upon attending the radiology conference for high-school students held at Duke Hospital, I found that I was rather shamefully uninformed. Besides learning what made the machines click and whir, I discovered that radiology is far from a shunted branch of the medical field; if anything, it is the nexus of modern medicine, filled with new technology and an ever-growing future.

George S. Bisset III, MD (Vice Chair, Duke Department of Radiology) and Lianne Gonsalves of Cary Academy, author of this essay

The doctors and technicians at the conference introduced me to a field that went beyond x-rays and grainy black-and-white depictions of our insides. I learned about magnetic resonance imaging (MRIs) and computed tomography (CT) scans, which capture and depict cross-sections of our bodies to help radiologists and doctors search for tumors and other abnormalities. I learned that ultrasounds aren’t just used for checking up on a future family member. With the help of a skilled technician and assorted probes, ultrasounds can also show a beating heart and even the direction of blood flow.

Innovation after innovation makes radiology an exciting and expanding field. Once an MRI captures pictures of one’s midsection, radiologists now possess the technology to construct three dimensional models to better help them visualize and identify our ailments. I saw a representation of a brain, with all the gray matter removed, leaving only a series of nerves. One of these nerves was inflamed and, said our instructing radiologist, the culprit in a series of painful headaches the patient was suffering from.

From nuclear medicine to a moving digital model of the inside of someone’s small intestines, radiology is vastly changed from what it was twenty years ago and promises to be very different in another twenty.

Radiologists, I also learned, do not live and work removed from other doctors and patients in their hospital’s basement. They can often be quite involved with patient care, acting as consults for a patient’s practitioner or surgeon. It is their responsibility to find every menacing bit of a malignant tumor, to recognize small holes in bones that may spread to the rest of the body. They identify the fractures, the dislocations, the current location of the accidentally swallowed penny. In some sense, doctors are forced to work blindly until radiologists give them the ability to get an inside look. With the complete, well-compiled “inside” information that a radiologist provides, he or she can also offer more accurate diagnoses and better possible courses of action to doctors.

Radiologists are remarkably versatile; they identify the strained ligaments in the knee or a dislodged meniscus in athletes. They interpret MRIs and find blockages in kidneys. They can look for and recognize any abnormalities in any part of the body, from the brain to the pinky toe. Physicians greatly rely on radiologists to provide insight on what goes on within.

Only a few weeks after I attended the conference, I went to my doctor with a pain on the right side, a little lower than my abdomen. With a few possible diagnoses in mind, but nothing concrete, she sent me for an ultrasound to a get a clearer look of my insides and (they hoped) my problem. A cheerful radiology technician performed a pelvic ultrasound and within hours, a radiologist had viewed, identified, and informed my doctor of a small, unthreatening cyst.

I’m grateful for the opportunity the conference provided me with to learn about radiology and all that the field entails. I was awed by the incredible ability radiologists have to point out the one blur in the series of CT scan blurs that is the abnormality. I discovered different and exciting career opportunities, ranging from administrator to technician, and learned how they each work congruously to provide rapid diagnoses for patients. From pediatric radiology, to nuclear medicine, from guzzling barium to getting a map made of the brain, the chances are that everyone will, at some point in their life pass, if fleetingly, through the radiology department. Sometimes the news they provide is a welcome relief, other times, it shatters lives. Either way, radiologists are our spies on the inside; they provide the rest of the medical community and their patients with information on what we must fight and how to beat it.

By Rinchen Lama, Leesville Road High School (First Runner-up)

No, you really do not hear much about them, but they are there. Every time you visit a hospital and get an x-ray, a CT scan, or a MRI they’re involved. No, it they’re not some secret society of super secret doctors, but simply radiologists. Radiologists are not in the limelight, yet they are an intrinsic part of modern medicine, right on the frontline of patient care. When I attended Duke Hospital’s radiology tour, I received the opportunity to learn more about a little-known profession.

Quite honestly, I really did not know exactly what a radiologist was. The doctors at the tour self-deprecatingly joked that a radiologist, unlike some common misconceptions, did not fix radiators. For such a fundamental part of medicine, I, like much of the general public, was woefully unaware.

What I surmised after my experience at Duke Hospital was that radiology was in the business of giving answers. While radiologists may not be prescribing the medications or conducting life-saving surgeries, they are giving the where, what, and most importantly, why. They delivered the remedies that help diagnose and treat. Essentially, radiologists are the doctor’s doctor. They provide the guiding light for other doctors to lead the path towards better health. Radiologists are the strategist, the masterminds behind every medical treatment.

Patients easily could over look the contributions of radiologists to their health care because they are not in the public’s eye. There are no shows like ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy to glamorize the life of a radiologist. Like the radiology department’s low-key location at Duke Hospital on the ground floor, radiology forms the foundation for all health care. It is the constantly moving, never static field of medicine which propels the quality of health care we receive.

During the tour at Duke Hospital, Mary Conyers Tucker, a young woman who had survived cancer, described the impact of radiology and radiologists in her life. While we all might not be cancer survivors, I’m sure we do not have to look far to find a life impacted by radiology.

For me, I did not have to search farther than in my own family. A few years ago, my mother began experiencing numbness in her hands and impaired memory. For my family this began a period of uncertainty and a search for answers. Why was this happening to my mother? She was healthy woman; she was not obese, did not smoke, exercised regularly, and ate healthfully -- why my mom of all people? My mom ran a gauntlet of tests, each more taxing than the other, and still no answers. Then she had an MRI. And finally, answers. Finally something we could work with. Finally some much needed peace of mind.

Through modern medicine’s miracles, my mother and family had a solution without once putting my mom through invasive surgery. And that is just it. Radiology is constantly moving towards less intrusive, less invasive procedures that still address the problems, but allow patients to live in the meantime. Our life was not completely in limbo. Radiology pinpointed my mother’s problem, and the doctors knew where to go to fix it. It was not a shot in the dark.

My parents always emphasized to me that success has nothing to do with accolades or material riches -- that success is measured by an individual’s impact on his or her community and that this is the goal I should strive towards. Somehow, I think radiologists’ parents must have said the same things. No, they’re not performing surgeries on conjoined twins or making the front pages for bizarre medical findings, but they are undoubtedly improving my and your quality of life. We must remember that good health care is a team effort from the family doctors, to the nurses, to the radiologists. And while the radiologists may not be the star quarterback, they are certainly taking one for the team.