The torture machine

If you’ve ever had a mammogram, you know what this is.

Yup, it’s a torture machine! What else can you call a machine which squashes your breasts until they’re virtually flat, and all you can do is let out a squeak of a scream? Aargh!

Learning about friends and colleagues being diagnosed with breast cancer is enough to make me run scared to my ob-gyne. So after my annual physical, my ob-gyne prescribed me to undergo a mammogram. And though there’s no family history of breast cancer, the fact that there’s a history of cancer at all (my grandfather died of stomach cancer), is enough justification for me to have it done. Hypochondriac? Maybe. Careful? Yes!

It was my first mammogram ever, and let me tell you, it hurt like hell! The horror stories I heard were true! I consider myself as having a fairly high tolerance for pain, so if I say this hurts, it really does! But it’s a necessary evil for women, more so those who are 25 and older. The National Cancer Institute and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommend that women in their forties and older have mammograms every one to two years, but from what I’ve seen, it seems prudent to have regular mammograms earlier.

So even if it does hurt, I’d still say to women everywhere to go for it. Pain or no pain, go for it! It's just 10 minutes of pain anyway. Early detection of cancer increases your chances of survival. And to find out more about breast cancer, check out the link below:

http://www.thebreastcancersite.com/