Well ‘it’ arrived in the mail last week, heralding in summer in a manner similar to the arrival of mosquitoes.
The ‘it’ I speak of is the reminder that ‘it is time to be done.’ No, not the time to spay or neuter your beasty (and I am referring to the canine variety of beast, not the one you are married to).
It is time to have an annual mammogram.
So, appointment made, I thought I would re-visit my post about the first mammogram I was beckoned to appear (and I mean appear) at.
Give it a read,
have a couple of giggles,
then,
if it is ‘time to be done’
(or maybe it was time quite a while ago),
make an appointment …
it could save a life …
yours.
Mammo-What? Part 1 Anticipation
I really do not mind having birthdays. I do not even mind the number of birthdays that I have had. Heck, I am not even that upset about my mid-life body (it wasn’t that great in my twenties, and I am more physically active now, so it’s actually on an upward trend … which is humerus, since most of my body parts are on a downward trend …).
What I am not excited about is the invasion of medical tests on my body just because it is over forty!
All of a sudden, my optometrist checks for things like cataracts, and the need for bifocals. My dentist is on the search for recessing gums. And, when I went for that annual ‘woman’ appointment (which I last had done … hum, five years ago), the delightful, cheery, youthful nurse (grrr!) says, “oh, you are forty-two … did you know that women over forty are recommended to have a mammogram every two years?’ Now, how would I know that, I’m only thirty-nine, with three years experience?
So today, like an inmate on death row, heading to the guillotine, I will go to my very first mammogram …
When I got the appointment, I told my hubby that I was going to blog about it, and he said, “you’re not?” And his shocked, astounded, unbelieving question cinched it 😉 (oh, the life of the woman who likes to shock her husband), so, here is the fruit of his amazement!
So, as I have been planning and preparing (mentally) for this appointment, I have been having flashbacks (not hot flashes … that is still to come … and when they do, I will probably blog about them) and nightmares.
The flashbacks have been to those mass emails about mammograms … that are ‘supposed’ to be funny. Come to think of it, they were funny … when I was too young to need to have one! Now their ‘humorous’ messages, make me feel sick to my stomach. Stories of having your ‘girls’ moved and molded like silly putty, between two cold, hard paddles of metal. Moving my ‘twin peeks’ into positions and for lengths of time that God Almighty NEVER intended them to be. I am feeling palpitations of Nascar speeds in my heart just thinking about it! What if, like my mom used to say about making funny faces behind people’s backs, that my bodacious tatas get so squeezed and twisted that they stay that way forever! What if my ‘hi beams’ become ‘low beams’?
Then there’s the nightmares … they are pretty much the same as the flashbacks, but at night, and more sweating is involved (and hubby is not involved in the sweating, other than him dialing 911, because he thinks I am having a heart attack, or seizure or that I’ve lost it … mentally … which, I have to say, I think maybe I am).
But, I am woman … and I will ‘suck it up’ because that is what we women do. 
This, although unpleasant, is something that provides detection that women in years past would have, and did, die for.
So ladies (and sensitive male readers, who really do want to know what a woman thinks about the realities of her life), check back tomorrow, for the continuing saga of Mammo-What?
This must be done, and it could be worse …
I could be a man going to an appointment for a ‘digital’ check-up!
itsawonderfilledlife 