Mammograms - friend or foe

For the past few days, I’ve been avoiding the homepage of Facebook. Lately, there always seems to be something in the news or a post of a member that tick me off. Since I have to cut down on stress I decided to avoid Facebook.

Unfortunately, while checking Facebook’s home page to see if any of my friends have birthdays, I noticed a post of a woman who stated that she was having her boobage squashed. She was referring to a mammogram.

Her word usage ruffled my feathers. Why couldn’t she just say “I’m having a mammogram” or if she had to be graphic “I’m having my breasts squashed”. Why call breasts boobage?

It ticks me off when grown women use words such as boobage, boobies, etc. Are they women or are they big children who don’t dare to use the word breasts?

It makes me wonder how they refer to their husband’s penis. Do they call the organ a pippi? And what kind of a name do they assign to their vagina?

I was silly enough to join the conversation and stumbled across some disturbing statements. Trying to help I put in my two cents, but this was not well received.

After leaving the conversation I did some research and found that on the subjects of mammograms medical opinions are divided. Some doctors are in favor of mammograms as it is a way for early breast cancer detection, others consider the risk of radiation too high and advice to avoid mammograms.

As a general rule, women between the ages of 35 and 50 should have a mammogram once a year, while women over the age of 50 every two years. If a woman has concerns between mammograms, she can have a manual exam or an ultrasound.

If a lump gets detected, standard procedure is to do a biopsy. Three samples are removed from the lump, send to the lab and within a matter of days, the results show whether the lump is benign or malignant.

While mammograms do expose patients to a certain amount of radiation, early breast cancer detection is key for survival. So every woman should decide for herself … will she have an annual mammogram and have the benefit of catching a cancerous lump early, when treatment is simple, and live; or avoid the exam and risk that by the time a cancerous lump is found, it’s too late to do something about it.

I don't know what ticks me off more, women who use baby talk or women who stick their heads in the sand.

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