My First Mammogram

First of all, it hurts. It really does. If you've ever placed a chicken breast between two pieces of plastic wrap, you know what it kinda looks like. If you've ever then taken a mallot and pounded that chicken breast, you have an idea of what it kinda feels like.

Of course, there's no pounding! The technician, deftly handling your breast as if it were her own, places it on a square of padded machinery that is attached to a large, optical-looking piece of machinery. After you are in position, she lowers the clear plastic tray-looking thing down, down, smashingly down until your breast is splayed between the square and the tray and you finally go "Whoa!" out of pain and a bit of shock. It's not just the breast that they get. They go beyond what would get covered in the average bra, all the way up the chest wall halfway to your shoulder. It all gets "compressed." I must admit to actually getting paranoid for a moment, thinking, "This is too compressed," "This is the beginnings of what medical torture must be like," and "Do a lot of women cry at this point?"

I didn't cry (it wasn't that bad), and she wasn't torturing me, but it IS pretty smashy. But not too--at least for the short amount of time you must hold still and try to ignore how very uncomfortable you are. Really--it's less than 10 seconds, and all of us can put up with it for less than 10 seconds.

After the top-bottom view she lines you up for a left-right/diagonal view, and then repeats it with the other breast. Only 4 films. You get 8 if you have breast implants, plus you have the constant mind meld of the machine busting open the implants, which is a real good reason to never get implants (besides the general ridiculousness of them and the possibility of resembling Pamela Anderson in any way).

I'm 34--a bit young for mammograms. However, my mother and her sister were both diagnosed with breast cancer last year at the ages of 58 and 53, respectively. I don't know by what percentage this upped my chances of getting it, but it did--significantly enough, apparently, to be told by three doctors that I should get a baseline mammogram now and one a year for a long time.

Women have a right to question the medical establishment. Our health has always been and continues to be--yes! really! even now--not considered as important/pressing/real/worth funding/etc. as that of men. And there has been some grumbling about women not really needing mammograms, false positives, and the general manipulation of women--once again!--by the patriarchal medical establishment.

Some of it may be true, but until it's damn-near a scientific law that mammograms are a sham, I will get mine, and I will do my monthly breast checks. The number of women who will get this disease is staggering. Plus, my mom and aunt both did regular self checks and didn't find their tumors--based on their location, they would not have been discovered without a mammogram. My mom's tumor was a killer, too--if not found, there is little doubt that it would have spread.

We need a cure, but we also need to find the cause. I have a sneaking and uneducated suspicion that the cause lies in all the toxins around us and inside of us--toxins that take up residence in fatty tissue, twisting and distorting into Gollum-like cells that spawn ugly little tumors.

My writing is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but it is honest. Mammograms are uncomfortable. But less than a minute of moderate pain and lingering red marks on the chest are a small price to pay for a procedure that has saved thousands of lives--and maybe yours, too.