The Mammogram

The biggest reason I'm doing this blog is because I want to record my whole experience for Gemma and Joshua to read one day.

So I'm going back to the beginning, back to the day when I thought I had a swollen lymph node under my arm, and am going to work forward from there.

*******

One day, I found myself getting my first mammogram at age 34.

I was sitting in a hospital gown, naked from the waste up, and this much I expected. What I did not expect was to be handed 3 stickers. 2 were circles, to be placed on my nipples, and one was a triangle, to be placed on the lump. And they all had a little metal dot in the middle so they'd show up on the mammogram.

They were patterned like Laura Ashely curtains.

For whose sake? Mine? Oh thank you, mammogram people, I feel so feminine now. I know! While I'm feeling so flowery and pink and delicate, why don't I load one of my breasts onto that plexiglas tray and have you press another tray on top of it until it's really squeezed and then have you press just a little bit more and you tell me to throw my head back lest my chin get caught in the radioactive waves coursing down in front of me?

The only difference between that machine and a dry cleaner's pants press is that the latter is not ice cold.

But, thanks, the decorated nipple labels helped take the edge off the experience.