Last summer, I found a lump in my breast. After my initial freak out, and my simultaneous “oh, it’s nothing”, I made an appointment with my ob/gyn to get it officially checked out. They sent me for my first mammogram.
I’d never had one before, and neither had any of my friends. I’d heard bad things about them on tv, from comediennes, (I believe it was Rita Rudner who said you stand in one room and they take your breasts and pull them into another room), and I was full of butterflies and jitters as I sat in the waiting room, trying to get some magazine to hold my attention.
After I got changed into my beautiful paper gown, the fun really started. It’s always a little bizarre to bear your chest in front of a stranger, even if she is a medical technician.
If you want to get an idea of what a mammogram is like, try this: First, get someone with freezing cold hands to manhandle your breasts for a while. Then, take 2 hardback books and smash your breast between them. Except put the books in the freezer first - the cold will help add to the realism.
Here’s how it went. Cold-handed medical technician gots me to stand in front of the mammogram machine (yeah, I’m sure it’s got a real name, but I don’t know what it is). Here’s a picture, for those of you that, like me, don’t know what one looks like. First, she took my left breast, with her cold hands, and lifted it onto a glass plate. She told me to take a deep breath and then lowered the other plate to smash the crap out of my breast. And just when I thought my breast was as compressed as it would ever get, she tightened it a little more. I got to stand there for a few seconds while she ran behind the radiation shield and the machine took the picture. Then, she released my boob. She took a few more pictures, from different angles (new ways of smashing my breast!) and repeated on the other breast.
Then, I got to sit, still in my lovely paper gown, while the radiologist examined the films, and then got sent for a breast ultrasound. (This process was infinitely more comfortable, once I got beyond the ultrasound goo on my boob.)
So, I earned my Mammogram Merit Badge. Or I felt like I did. Finally, I understood what all those comediennes were talking about. I could commiserate with the women on The View. But it wasn’t that bad. Uncomfortable, sure, but it didn’t really hurt. It left no lasting marks. I’m definitely not jumping up and down with joy at the prospect of my next one, but I’m not dreading it either.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, the lump was basically nothing. Turns out I’ve got Fibrocystic Breast Syndrome, which is very common. I’ll have to get mammograms twice a year, even though I’m well below 40 (I turned 30 right before I discovered the lump), but I don’t have to worry.
Emschwar
I had my first mammogram this summer, at the age of 36. My doctor wanted to get a baseline assessment, since my mom developed breast cancer (she’s fine now) in her mid-fifties. Since my mammogram was fine, I now don’t have to have another one done until I reach 40.
I’m a total wimp when it comes to medical procedures of pretty much any kind (seriously - I passed out just listening to my mom’s surgeon describe her lumpectomy) and I have to say that the mammogram was not bad at all. In fact, I found it less uncomfortable that the blogger above did
I was fortunate to have a really good technician, which probably helped a lot.