.
Ladies, just got back from my mammogram. Jeez.
I know the alternative isn’t desirable, but my gosh, can’t there be a
better way? It isn’t always this way,
and I don’t want to scare those younger women who have not started this process,
but today it hurt!
I know I complained that the Body Pump designers are
sadistic, but they are NOTHING compared to the designers of the mammogram
machine. Maybe it gets better as you get
older, you know, the breasts start drooping and kind of going flat – right? But right now they are NOT flat. So okay for those of you who haven’t
experienced this --- men if you are still reading --- and younger women---this
is how today went.
A rather disgruntled radiology technician – I guess that is
the professional title-- takes me into a small, clinical looking room and hands me this contraption that is supposed to protect my pelvic area. In my case, it was thick hard metal rod in a circular
shape that I was supposed twist open to put around my waist. I'm not sure how to explain it, except it is like one of those metal rings you must twist to put your keys and loyalty cards onto only much bigger. I managed to do it, but when the technician
later said “suck in your breath” I wondered why she would need to say that. I was sucked in. Oh yeah. Sucked in good.
I should be grateful
I suppose because I believe there was a bigger size sitting on the table so I
guess I looked small enough for the one I got.
That was a bit of consolation, and I was NOT going to ask for the bigger
size. I have my pride..
Next the technician takes the paper gown (and believe me
that is a stretch calling this thing a gown) off of my upper body, shoves me
against this machine with what looks like two pieces of hard clear plastic
about five inches from each other---sort of like a big clear sandwich and my breast is the filling. She pulls
my right breast between the two hard pieces of plastic, walks behind a shield and presses the button that makes the machine SQUEEZE.
When I say squeeze, imagine taking a child’s
balloon that you have blown to its full capacity (don’t laugh – they are still
pretty perky) and placing it between two encyclopedias then adding the
family bible and the unabridged Webster dictionary.
That technician is lucky that she walked behind the shield
before she pressed that squeeze button.
If I had been able to get at her I’m not sure what I would have done. As she presses squeeze, she is also saying to
me “hold your breath.” I had been holding it
since the metal rod was wrapped around my middle, but I will admit, I WAS able
to suck in a little more.
The only good thing about today other than the obvious that
I can afford health care was the sick mental picture I was enjoying of a machine
that could be developed to detect penis cancer.
As I envisioned it, the machine would be much lower than the one for breast
cancer, obviously. It would be more
tubular shaped – kind of like a hot dog bun—but the psi (pressure per square
inch) would be about 90, which is the psi
for my bicycle tires.
I have no doubt
that a man invented the mammogram machine, so it is only fair that a woman
invent the penogram machine.
That’s how my day went today – 15 days from retirement.
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