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Tuesday, January 18, 2022. I started getting annual screening mammograms in January 2018, at age 40, per my primary care provider's recommendation. She thought it was a good preventative measure, considering my dense breast tissue. The extra imaging would give the radiologists a better baseline to look back at year over year for comparison, and help identify something abnormal faster.
- According to breastcancer.org, dense breasts can be twice as likely to develop cancer as non dense breasts and can make it harder for mammograms to detect breast cancer
Screening at a younger age also meant there was a greater risk of needing extra imaging, ultrasounds, and biopsies. I was bummed to have yet another crappy body part that would most likely require extra medical attention. I also had a strong suspicion that I would be one of the unlucky ones diagnosed with breast cancer at some point in my lifetime. As far as I was aware, none of the women in my family had ever had breast cancer, so why was I suspicious I would get it?
Two out of my first three annual mammograms (Jan 2018, Jan 2019, and Jan 2020) needed extra imaging to rule out something that looked suspicious. I learned that I had a breast density score of D, the highest score. About 10% of women fall into this category. I was told that imaging for extremely dense breasts looks like a snowstorm. It's difficult to spot a cancer growth. In January 2021, when the world was still in the grips of a deadly pandemic, I chose to skip my 4th annual screening mammogram because I knew I would end up needing extra imaging, and I figured I would just wait until 2022 when I felt safer visiting the health clinics.
3:00 PM. I stopped working for the day and drove over to the family medicine clinic. I had previously told my boss I would be leaving early for my annual screening mammogram and that she should expect me also to be out for another mammogram later in the week, because I anticipated being called back for diagnostic imaging.
Something felt different this year when I stepped up to that big machine.
Nor did it help when the mammogram technician said to me in a slightly bitchy tone, in response to my having skipped the previous year, "Cancer doesn't stop when there's a pandemic."
I am still considering reaching out to file a formal complaint against that technician. Her tone and choice of words were not helpful in any way and felt like a direct insult to my judgement. That woman assumed I was going to get cancer because I skipped my screening mammogram in 2021. She didn't know that I have a 32-year history of chronic health problems. She didn't know that I had made a careful, well-thought-out decision to wait an extra year between screenings because it felt like the better of two evils. She didn't know that for me it felt like the right choice to skip being at multiple health care facilities on different days when COVID-19 cases were significantly higher in my community.
Later that evening, my phone chirped an email notification that the results were posted to my electronic health record. As expected, they were:
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I wasn't surprised in the least. In fact, I think I remember saying to Miah, "Yep, incomplete results, needs more imaging," in a pissed-off, matter-of-fact tone.
Miah might have started worrying at this point, I'm not sure. I don't think either of us had any idea of what was coming next. We were still dealing with our dog Sparkle's right leg injury that she had suffered over Christmas. Our jobs were starting to pick up with new annual goals and responsibilities, and we were getting into the swing of 2022. "Even years are always better," I told myself. Boy, did I turn out to be wrong on that one.
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End of 2 - Screening Mammogram