Mammogramma

In a rare moment of adult responsibility I scheduled a mammogram for Friday afternoon. I don't know what my reproductive system will think, a mammogram on Friday and a Pap smear on Monday. I picture my ovaries whispering to each other across my uterus, "Are we coming out of retirement?"

This is my first mammogram in three years. I've had the yearly breast exams, in which my doctor and I politely talk while he pads at my boobies like a cat, but this is the first mammogram since the one that really hurt.

This one did not hurt. Not one bit.

Other high points:

From the moment I stepped into the hospital to the moment I stepped out, the visit took twenty minutes. Granted, the drive there was 45 minutes and the drive back an hour.

There was no wait in the check-in waiting room. At first I didn't recognize the waiting room, since I had confused it with the MRI waiting room. On the way out I was able to tell them the reason it all looked unfamiliar was that I'd never been there more than two minutes.

At the check-in desk I signed up for a 3D breast image. It cost 60 dollars more, but they said it was better for women with dense breasts. I suppose they are still dense, if looser and smaller. (I noted the shrivel texture of my bosom as we flopped them into the device.) At first I thought I'd be getting an image like those 3D baby ultrasounds, but no. It's more like an MRI, where the camera pivots around you and makes photos of "slices."  I had to research this after, because Gary was planning to hang the 3D image in the bathroom.

There was almost no wait in the second waiting room, the one where we all get naked and hang out in our gowns tied in the front.

My back was turned when the disoriented woman pulled the curtain on my changing room when I was half-naked.

A nice lady helped me figure out the cappuccino / cocoa machine. I was summoned to the exam room even before the cocoa finished dispensing, but they waited and I sipped cocoa during my exam.

The nurse must have noticed my weight change, since she asked me what I weighed at my last mammogram before she asked what my weight was today.

Not a bad experience at all. I could do that yearly. I feel that I should go on Yelp and give the Barnes-Jewish fifth floor Mammography suite a five-star review.

Comments

[mrs hall]

I had my first mammogram this year. It hurt and zi felt fat. Which I'm not. I'm like pure muscle, or, at least that's how I usually feel. But yeah. Painful and fat. Yeah turning 40 and getting it done yearly now

[theQueen]

Mrs hall - I've seen your videos. You are a rock. Maybe it was the time of the month?