Last year when I had my annual exam, I asked the midwife about having a mammogram since the dreaded 40th birthday was approaching. She gave me the information about who to call and I proactively set up an appointment for 2 days before my birthday.

After worrying for 2 weeks prior to the appointment, showing up on time, registering, changing into a gown, waiting, and answering half of the technician’s questions she told me that I couldn’t have the mammogram that day because I had only quit nursing a month or so before. I was supposed to wait 6 months. So the technician made me a new appointment for January 8th.

Since I didn’t know what to expect I faced my appointment with trepidation, but luckily Karen told me that it’s no big deal, just a few squeezes and it would be over (sounds like my high school boyfriend). I thought it might help any of you ladies who are approaching 40 if I told you about my experience. And by the way…that is NOT my boob in the picture in case you were wondering.

So here goes. I show up at Newton Wellesley 15 minutes before showtime, and follow the signs to the main hospital entrance and Women’s Imaging, which is right by the front door. I am greeted by a nice older lady who takes my name and asks me to sit in the waiting room. After about 5 minutes, I am ushered by the same nice lady to one of two computer stations where another really nice lady checks the computer to make sure my information is current, and gives me a pink ticket that says “mammogram”. The song “She’s Got a Ticket to Ride” plays in my head while I wait for the next nice older lady, Bernice. She takes my ticket and shows me to the changing room, where there are a bunch of lockers and 4-5 small dressing rooms. She tells me to strip to the waist and put on a johnny with the opening in the back, put my clothes in an empty locker, and take the key with me to the next waiting room.

After completing all of Bernice’s assigned tasks I enter another waiting room and sit with 8 other johnny-clad ladies who look like they wish they were anywhere else. Personally, I was so thoroughly enjoying my quiet time reading a book with nobody sitting on me, pulling my hair, asking for a snack, or needing to be wiped, I forgot to obsess about the upcoming procedure. There were even graham crackers and juice…what could be better?

After about 20 minutes, a very nice and chatty technician named Maureen calls my name. Let me take this opportunity to point out that I had encountered 4 people working in the Women’s Imaging Department and they were all SO NICE. What are the chances of that? I follow Maureen to a chilly 10′ x 10′ room where she asks me to sit down and answer questions about my health history. Judging from the questions, they were used to establish my risk factors for breast cancer. Little Internal Voice #1: “Oh crap. I might have breast cancer. What if I have breast cancer? I could die.” Little Internal Voice #2: “Shut up dummy! You said the same things when you had that AIDS test in 1997.”

Maureen explains what she is going to do and even though the machine looks big and scary I feel like if I made it through three natural childbirths I can make it through a mammogram. After a lot of pulling, pushing, and positioning, Maureen navigates my left boob up onto a flat metal plate, brings a clear plastic plate down on top of it, and squishes it to an unrecognizable, slightly uncomfortable, but non-painful boobie pancake. She tells me to hold still while the digital image is taken, which is a total of about 20 seconds. She explains that the machine rotates up to 360 degrees in order to get images from different angles. Luckily, she removes my boob from the machine before rotating. That would really be uncomfortable. She repeats the process with the machine in different positions 5 more times, plus 1 additional time because I apparently breathed during the picture-taking. It’s hard not to do that.

Since I had read that most mammograms take 4 images and Maureen took 6 plus the extra one, the little voices started up again. #1: “Why did she take extra pictures? Maybe she saw something!” #2: “If she saw something she wouldn’t have continued with the idle chitchat about how interesting it must be to be a hardware consultant. Just SHUT UP!” Maureen asks me if I want to wait for my results (an hour to an hour and a half) or have someone call me. I had a meeting scheduled in an hour so I had to leave and have someone call me. Next time I will plan to wait for my results. Hmmmm…1 hour to obsess and worry? Or 48 hours?? Luckily I only obsessed for about the first 8 hours and then I mostly forgot about it.

Almost exactly 48 hours later I got a message from Debbie (Nice Lady #5) saying that my mammogram was normal. Yay!!! So ladies…if I can do it, you can do it. Don’t procrastinate!

~ Globally, a case of breast cancer is diagnosed every 29 seconds.
~ A woman dies from breast cancer every 75 seconds worldwide.

http://www.breastcancer.org/

http://www.komen.org/