Hello, Biggles here. We’re guinea pigs doing the A to Z Challenge, which might surprise you if you haven’t visited before.

X-rays

I don’t think x-rays are really a favourite thing, but they’re jolly clever.

Dr Rebekah has x-rayed me twice to find out what’s going on with my insides when I’m not well. The first time she found out I have congestive heart disease because my chest was all cloudy and my heart was enlarged. Mummy says she didn’t see that x-ray but she did see the second one, which showed I’ve developed little stones called gravel in my bladder, which is why weeing sometimes hurt.

This is an x-ray of Neville.

Hair doesnt show up on x-rays, so you can’t really tell it’s Neville. He was very hairy. What does it show ?

• Neville has trouble with his teeth roots. Some of the top ones are growing up towards his sinuses. I have one that is growing down to a point on my lower jaw, about the same point where’s Neville has a pointy bit. That’s why I have metacam, to keep it from hurting me.
• Neville is growing some bladder stones. You can just see some little round things up near the join of his legs to his backbone.
• Neville’s poops are normal. You can more or less see them going along his passages inside, up and down and round and round. Dr Rebekah says that most of our belly is poops-in-progress.

If you are a doctor or a radiologist (a professional x-ray taker and reader) you can probably see much more than we can.

X-rays were discovered by a scientist called Wilhelm Röntgen. He called them X because he didn’t know what the rays were. Mummy wrote about this for the A to Z one year. Actually it was a guest post from Auntie Vidya. But she didn’t have a really good x-ray to show you.

I think that’s EXhausted my knowledge of x-rays!

Have you had an x-ray? What did it tell you?

love

Biggles xxx