Had a Good Mammo Grama, Just as Fine as It Can Be

Recently had my mammogram. I have these cysts my OB/GYN wants to watch, bless her heart.

The tech at the breast health center told me the cysts are harmless fluid-filled sacks embeddedin my fibrous tissue. She said this as she wrenched my flesh into the giant panini maker.

Terrific. My lovelies are small and sagging already. Now they’ll be flat too.

I’m thankful for the screening and relieved for the benign results. I’m also poignantly reminded that some in Washington consider it a drain of resources to screen these harmless cysts. Thank you, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.

These cysts don’t pose a risk to me now. Why waste the money?

Problem is, like some politicians, disease can be random and unpredictable.

Mammograms exist to identify abnormalities early. And early is when you may still have a chance to survive them.

True proponents of life-saving quality healthcare would throw the full force of their support behind preventive technologies. Then they would get to work figuring out how to make them affordable.

But the capitalist option is unfair, whines the left. But the socialist option is evil, whines the right.

Come on, people. Is that the best you can do?

This is America. We invent things here.

Nobody likes President Obama’s healthcare plan except the folks who wrote it. Lord knows no one else read it.

Repeal it already and come up with something better.

Because if there’s one thing I hate more than mammograms and short-sighted politicians, it’s cancer.

So bring on the pokers, the prodders, the scans. The cultures, the ultrasounds and the mammograms. I’ll pay for them out of my own pocket if I must.

But don’t stand in the way of the tests and treatments that could save my life. Don’t ration, diminish and dumb down my care.

Battered as it may be, and in some places flattened, the length of my life is not for any government to decide.

All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. Psalm 139:16 NIV

Thanks to Carl Carlton whose 1981 hit She’s a Bad Mama Jama inspired the title. Click here to listen on YouTube and start your weekend dancing.

 

5 thoughts on “Had a Good Mammo Grama, Just as Fine as It Can Be”

  1. Pingback: 35 = 4 | Here's the Diehl

  2. Great post Aimee. I’ll NEVER EVER forget standing alone (Sean was out in the main waiting area) in the post-procedure waiting room (closet with a mirror, bench, and 2 magazines) for the results of my follow up mammogram/ultrasound 2 years ago. 2 weeks earlier my maternal aunt had undergone surgery for breast cancer…..3 years after my Mom’s breast cancer…..2 years after my maternal grandmther’s breast cancer…..2 years after my maternal great aunt’s breas cancer. One week earlier I’d had my rountine mammogram and the radiologist thought she saw “a shadow that looked questionable”. So, I spent the week in between mammogram one and mammogram two wondering how my treatment would go, constructing an e-mail to my closest friends to explain what was going to happen, agonizing over Sean having to raise Delaney without his wife around, Delaney growing up motherless, and the agony my mother would endure. There were moments of resolve and even peace – the kind that passes all understanding and comes only from God – but mostly it as agony. And I was sure I had cancer. Then the nice lady came into the closet with me and handed me a single piece of paper with a little scribbled signature and a check mark by the box that said “within normal limits”. I looked at and then at her and waited. She finally said “what is it?” to which I replied “it’s normal?” She said, hands in pockets ( I don’t know why I remember that) “Yes, you’re fine. Did you think something was wrong with you?” And then I fell onto her shoulder and wept or a solid 5 minutes I guess – long enough to waste all my remaining mascara on her starched white lab coat. So, I’m with you – don’t take away my right to ask and pay for it if I decide I want to be poked and prodded.

    1. That is a classic story, Alisa. Thanks for sharing. I can so see you doing that (I can so see me doing that, but this comment’s about you :) ).
      Next time, what would you think if we arranged a friends day out at the breast health center so we could all go together? There would be mimosas and chocolate and bacon-wrapped scallops to snack on while we all gush in the waiting room. Maybe even manicures and pedicures. Like one big party. We could all laugh and cry with each others’ results. I think there’s a business idea in this somewhere.
      Glad all is well. Life is sweet! Love and miss you, dear friend.

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