Issue #32: February 23, 2026

Every year, roughly 600,000 Americans die of cancer. A significant chunk of those deaths aren't from cancers that couldn't be treated — they're from cancers that were found too late to treat well.

That distinction matters. And it's what kept pulling me back to an uncomfortable question: what if something is quietly developing right now, and I'd have absolutely no idea?

Not because I felt sick. Not because a doctor flagged something. I didn't have a health scare or a family history that kept me up at night. I'm generally healthy, I track my bloodwork through Function Health, and by most measures things look fine.

But "feels fine" and "is fine" aren't always the same thing. And the more I've read about how the deadliest conditions actually develop — slowly, silently, without symptoms until they're not — the harder it became to justify waiting for a reason to look.

So I added the Ezra full-body MRI to my Function Health account. $499. Twenty-two minutes. Let's see what's actually in there.

🔬 What Ezra Is

Ezra is a full-body MRI service designed specifically for preventive screening. In a single session, it images your major organs using magnetic resonance rather than radiation — no X-ray exposure, no contrast dye in most protocols, no invasive anything. The scan covers:

What makes it different from a standard MRI is the intent. This isn't diagnostic imaging ordered because something's wrong. It's a proactive snapshot of soft tissue that a typical annual physical never comes close to touching. Your doctor can listen to your heart, check your blood pressure, and order labs — but they can't see your pancreas. Ezra can.

Through Function Health it's accessible as an add-on, which makes it easy to fold into the same mindset as tracking bloodwork or monitoring your metabolic markers. The price — $499 — is real money, but it's worth putting in context. Most people spend more than that on supplements over the course of a year without a second thought. An ER visit without insurance starts at multiples of that before anyone even looks at you. For a full internal scan? It's not cheap, but it's not unreasonable either.

🧠 Why Bother When Nothing’s Wrong

This is the question I've gotten most when I mention I did it. And honestly, it's the right question to ask.

The honest answer is that most of the conditions people fear most don't come with early warnings. Pancreatic cancer is notoriously silent until it's advanced. Kidney lesions don't cause symptoms in their early stages. Aortic aneurysms can develop over years without any indication until they don't. The medical system is extraordinarily good at treating things once they're found — but it's not designed to go looking proactively. It waits for you to show up with a reason.

That's not a criticism. It's just how the incentive structure is built. Treatment is reimbursable. Prevention rarely is.

So if you want to get ahead of something rather than react to it, that largely falls on you. That's not a scary idea — it's actually an empowering one. You have more control over early detection than you probably think. You just have to opt in.

⚙️ What the Experience Was Actually Like

Straightforward, honestly. You check in, change into a gown, and lie down on the MRI table. The machine slides you in — and yes, it's a tight tunnel. I'm not claustrophobic at all and I was still aware of how close the walls were. Not uncomfortable, just snug in a way that feels new if you've never been in one.

The part nobody really prepares you for is the noise. MRI machines are loud in a way that's genuinely strange — rhythmic banging and clanking that sounds somewhere between heavy construction and a very angry percussion section. You wear earplugs, and then earmuffs over those. It's still audible.

The whole thing took about 22 minutes. No pain, no prep, nothing to recover from. I walked out thinking the same thing I imagine most people do: that was it?

⏳ Waiting on Results

Results started coming through about a week later, with everything finalized closer to two weeks out. Ezra's platform breaks it down organ by organ, with radiologist notes for each finding. It's organized and easy to read, which I appreciated — you're not left decoding a PDF from a hospital system.

Here's what I'll say about the waiting period: even going in calm and genuinely uncurious about what they'd find, there's a quiet psychological hum once you know someone is reviewing images of your internal organs. It's not dread. It's more like background awareness. A mild "huh, I wonder" that sits in the back of your mind for a week or two. Worth knowing that's there before you do it.

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✅ What They Found

Nothing that required follow-up.

Clean across the board. No flagged findings, no referrals, no physician call asking to discuss something.

My honest reaction was a mix of two things: obvious relief, and then something a little more interesting — a kind of quiet confidence I hadn't expected. Not the "I'm invincible" kind. More like confirmation that the internal picture actually matches the external one. The body that feels healthy looks healthy. That's a data point. It's a baseline. And having it feels different than just assuming everything is fine.

💡 The Part Worth Thinking About Before You Do It

Full-body imaging isn't without nuance, and I'd be leaving something important out if I didn't mention it.

Modern MRIs are sensitive enough to pick up things that are almost always harmless — small cysts, benign nodules, anatomical quirks that a huge percentage of the population has without ever knowing. These are called incidental findings, and they're common. Most lead absolutely nowhere. But once you see something flagged, it can be hard to emotionally dismiss it even when the radiologist's note says it's almost certainly nothing. That can mean follow-up imaging, a specialist visit, and a mental loop that's genuinely hard to turn off for some people.

If you tend toward health anxiety, think carefully before you do this — or at minimum have a good physician in your corner who can contextualize results in real time.

It's also worth being clear: Ezra doesn't replace your standard screenings. Mammograms, colonoscopies, PSA testing — those exist for good reasons. Think of the relationship this way:

One doesn't substitute for the other. They work better together.

🛡️ The Bigger Point

The Ezra scan didn't change my life. There was no dramatic finding, no near-miss, no moment that reframed everything.

What it gave me was something quieter and probably more valuable: one less blind spot.

Most people aren't neglecting their health because they don't care. They're neglecting it because prevention doesn't create urgency. Nothing hurts yet. There's no forcing function. And so the default is to wait — for a symptom, a scare, a reason.

But the whole point of prevention is acting before that reason arrives. The earlier something gets found, the more options exist. That's not complicated — it's just easy to defer indefinitely when you feel fine.

I'm glad I did it. Not because it found something, but because now I know. And knowing — even when what you learn is that everything looks normal — is always better than guessing.

Until next week. Stay vital.

-Jordan Slotopolsky

📚 Sources