I joke, but I only half joke, that if you come to one of our hospitals missing a limb, no one will believe you till they get a CAT scan, MRI or orthopedic consult.

Verghese is lamenting a modern clinical reflex: privileging tests, images, and specialist confirmation over direct observation and bedside examination. The hyperbole—needing a scan to “believe” a missing limb—satirizes how technology and defensive, protocol-driven medicine can erode clinicians’ confidence in their own senses and judgment. It also gestures toward a deeper ethical concern in his work: when attention shifts from the patient’s body and story to data streams, care can become impersonal and fragmented. The line functions as a warning that diagnostic tools, while powerful, should augment rather than replace the fundamental act of seeing and listening to the patient.