Seriously, Get Your Mammogram!

This is my personal public service announcement. Short, easy to accomplish, no excuses — get your annual mammogram exam. If you are like me, you have been thinking for years that these exams are a damn nuisance. Take time off to go to the hospital radiology department, put your breasts in that uncomfortable vice machine, only to be told — year after year — “Looks fine! Come back next year.”

I was a faithful adherent to the “get tested every year” directive. Until I was not. Beginning at age 40, and continuing for the next 27 years, I never missed. And then — in 2019 — I skipped the test. You know — all those excuses that we can easily find — “just too busy.” And then, by the spring of 2020, Covid happened, and I sure was not going to venture into a hospital and possibly expose myself to Covid just for this unneeded test. So, I waited an extra year. Luckily for me, I finally did schedule it in December of 2020, even though we were still in the midst of the pandemic.

The result? Stage 1 estrogen positive breast cancer. Cancer that had already spread enough that I needed a mastectomy rather than the less invasive lumpectomy. Had my cancer been discovered a year earlier, I likely would have had that lumpectomy and I would still have my left breast. Luckily for me, the cancer had not spread into my lymph nodes and I did not need chemotherapy.

Now six months into this cancer journey, I can happily report I am doing fine. And even though I had wonderful surgeons and amazingly supportive family and friends and robust health insurance coverage to ease the stress of this experience, it is not a journey I would wish on anyone else. Way too many tests, and waiting for results, and the stress of spending so much time at the cancer hospital, the sleepless nights waiting for the results of whatever the latest test was. Surprise developments that can happen even when you think you know what to expect next (for me, it was a baseball size seroma that had to be drained four times, and then a very strange hematoma 8 weeks after my mastectomy, which meant the surgery had to be done again).

So — please — do not be me. Go get your mammogram!