THE FULL MONTY

29 August 2022

I'm due for a mammogram.  Or I will be when they remind me.  I usually get mammograms done in October, but because COVID, there have been no reminders for two years.

When I worked for Dr. G he always recommended to his patients, "If you don't mind going in to Sacramento, Mammographia is the absolute best place to have mammograms. They just do it 'nicer' than most other places."

Yeah right. What's nice about having your boob smashed flat as a pancake?

I remembered my last mammograph, which I had at Kaiser. I was taken to a linoleum floored hallway and sat on a folding chair. When my turn was called, I went into a booth that was smaller than a changing room in a cheap clothing store. They handed me this drab prison-grey "thing" to put on. It didn't fit.

Then I went into the mammogram room. It was cold.

The tech, who was warm as Joan Crawford in the middle of a PMS attack, took my boob and plopped it on this ice-cold tray. Then she lowered the vice and tightened it as tight as it could possibly go. (I could have sworn she cackled.) This was done four times--two views per breast. My breasts ached for two days afterwards.

I went back to the hall and the folding chair and sat there while they waited to see if the shots came out all right (did I smile?) and then I got to get my clothes on and leave, tossing my gown in the big garbage vat that sat in the hall next to the folding chairs.

But the more Dr. G talked about Mammographia, the more intrigued I became. I wanted to find out how they could improve upon Kaiser's mammogram process. So I suggested that he arrange a free mammogram for me so I could back him up from personal experience when women were deciding where to go to have their boobs smashed.

I spoke with the Mammographia's office manager, Suzanne, who was very professional and pleasant and said that when I came in, she'd give me a tour of the facilities.

I walked through the door into an elegant office. Plush carpet, fuzzy wallpaper, rich looking furniture and a blonde with the shortest skirt, longest legs, and hoop-iest earrings sitting at a computer at the front desk. This turned out to be Suzanne, so I introduced myself.

She gave me forms to fill out and asked how I'd be paying. Uh..... I mentioned our little "professional courtesy" arrangement and she said she guessed she could do that. She was quite pleasant about it.

Though I was early, they took me to the mammogram room right away. It was lit by dim lights, had wooden living-room type chairs. The first thing I noticed was the warming pad on the metal tray of the mammogram machine. There would be no cold plate in this place. I was given a nice, well fitting navy blue colored top to wear.

The tech came in and had me remove the top, then she fiddled with my breasts (I had the mental image of myself in the years when I used to make bread dough). Oddly enough, even when she lowered the plate to cinch me tightly to expose the film , it wasn't uncomfortable. I couldn't believe it when she told me she was finished. Where was the pain?

While the films were being read, I was taken to another small, plush, well-decorated room to watch a videotape on self breast exam.

The film was only half over when the tech came back again to tell me that there had been some smudge on the film and she would have to take another two shots. Again the non-painful squeeze and two more films were made. She went off with them, leaving me in the room to read my book.

In a short time, she was back. "The doctor would like to do an ultrasound. He found something."

"Found something?" What did that mean?

So I sat there in the next room, looking at an updated version of the ultrasound machine that we had at the office. The tech went off to warm the contrast gel in the microwave. That was another nice little touch--no icy cold gel to worry about. She asked if I would be OK seeing the doctor without a chaperone. I assured her I would be fine.

Pretty soon Captain Kangaroo walked in. That's what he looked like. A short Captain Kangaroo. He had me sit on the exam table and open my gown so he could palpate my breasts. He had bad breath.

There I was sitting topless in front of Captain Kangaroo, who was poking and prodding at my breasts. I expected Mr. Moose to drop ping pong balls at any moment, but he didn't.

The Captain then had me lie on the table and turn on my left side. For a minute I couldn't remember which was my left side. He wedged my back in with a big foam pillow and fired up the ultrasound machine.  I'd never seen a breast ultrasound before. Quite different than the uterine machines at Dr. G's office.

Captain Kangaroo smeared some of the warm goo on my breast and began moving the sensor around. He took several pictures of different spots on my breast and then began palpating some more.

Finally The Captain turned off the machine and sat me up. "What I think I'm seeing is a fibroadenoma," he said (fortunately I knew that was a benign breast lump). But, since it's not most common to find new lumps in post-menopausal women, he compared the ultrasound he did with my last Kaiser mammogram, which I had sent to him, and decided that this had been there a long time and there was no problem.

By the time I got back to the office, I certainly could back up Dr. G's recommendation about having one's mammogram at "the Cadillac of mammograms." It was sad when I had to have my next mammogram and had to go back to Kaiser.