Skip to main content

Mammogram


My GYN, besides sounding like she has a nasal attack 24/7, is also a fairly conservative doc. And so all post-35-year-old patients are sent off for a routine Mammogram.

So today was my day.

All I am going to say is that apparently I have lots of muscle in mine -- which is good for a variety of, ahem, uplifting reasons. But it also lends itself to what I can only assume is what it will feel like if my breasts ever get caught in the subway doors. By a sadistic train operator.

Because of their, uh, density, I had to be "filmed" 7 times. Four apparently is normal. As I stood, naked from the waist up, allowing a stranger to handle my breasts like raw chicken slabs, and then squeezing them between two glass panes, I just kept trying to focus on my Rabbit and her sweet face as the plates attempted to Paillard me.

The tech grew concerned and mused that my pain threshold must be low. Whatever. Did I mention you're not allowed to breathe while the machine shoots away? While the plates squeeze you like some robotic S&M master?

It didn't hurt as bad as the morning after my C-Section. And it hurt worse than the spinal they gave me before. But then I got my gorgeous Rabbit from that. Luckily everything came back with a big fat "NORMAL."

But they're not kidding when they talk about the pain of growing old.

Comments

Sugarmama said…
One of my good college friends once worked as a "model" for doctors training on administering mammographies when the technology was still brand new. That meant she had a few DOZEN attempts at paillarding that day, all by doctors who didn't know what the hell they were doing yet. She at least got a few hundred bucks out of it though, which at the time was a nice chunk of money.
Manhattan Mama said…
All I can say is: Not Enough Money.
Although my mom all but called me a lightweight when I described my experience. Sheesh.

Popular posts from this blog

Apologies for being incommunicado this week and hope none of you out there are too distraught not to be receiving the usual almost-daily MotV missives. The reason for the silence is that I'm up to my neck, metaphorically-speaking, in research papers for my first grad course assessment. This experience has made me realise how rigorously un-academic I am in my thinking. It has also illuminated how reliant I am on red wine in order to get through endless evenings typing furiously on my laptop, not to mention the fueling of increasingly colorful curses that I feel obliged to aim at the University's online library system which consistently refuses to spit out any of the journals I'm desperate for (I refuse to believe this is 100% due to my technical incompetence...) Oh well, if this is the price one has to pay in order to realize a long-cherished dream then it's not all that bad... No one ever said a mid-life career change would be easy. Wish me luck!

A thought

Perhaps sometimes a gift can be delivered in the guise of a tragedy. It's just a matter of perception, after all. I suspect that the talent lies in looking beyond the surface to what lies beneath and beyond. And, of course, being able to make sense of it all and going on to apply that knowledge to building a productive way forward. Here's hoping.

It's my party and I'll cry if I want to

A friend recently emailed me to say that her big memory of her stay with us last year is that she had a great birthday, one of the few where she didn't 'act like a spoiled grumpy princess'. She tried to give me all the credit but as I explained to her, it was all down to having a fellow female organising the birthday fun rather than leaving it to her partner. Her email got me thinking about birthdays and how very different men and women are in their attitudes to celebrating special occasions. It also had me thinking about my birthday two years ago when I threw a major tantrum in the Carrefour car-park after being told that we were off to do the weekly shop, kids in tow, which was simply the final straw at the end of a very uninspiring day. In contrast, my birthday last year was rather lovely (a morning on my own in a spa with no mobile coverage, pure selfish bliss). This year - in a few short months, eek! - I'll be hitting the grand old age of 38. This will be my las...