I have mixed feelings. On one hand, YES! Get screenings! When you turn 40, if you find a lump, if you have a relative with breast cancer, get that mammogram! A mammogram when I had a lump found my cancer, which was then treated and beat back to No Evidence of Disease status.
On the other, way to put it on the consumer when women are getting breast cancer earlier in life and healthcare is becoming more inaccessible. Systemic changes need to be made; first mammograms at 35, free mammograms for everyone, free or very cheap genetic testing for BRCA1, and accessible and affordable treatment.
Suggesting that each person with breasts get them screened is the best answer in an imperfect system, and it should be encouraged. Get those screenings!
This is the time of year when I have determination and free time so i do all my medical appointments. This year I'm old enough that they want to screen me for colon cancer.
it's funny because current events, so i'm like, ah, it's the downfall of the western world. my taxes are funding genocide and man-babies playing dolls have decided that cruelty makes their enemies squeak satisfyingly and I get to watch babies starve about it. Meaninglessness blah blah. Oh and I have to get all these cancer screenings, and petition my insurance company about having them covered since they're supposed to be. And oh yes this and that. Mundane. Boring.
Also in current ongoing things, my most politically-active IRL friend, who lives over near the farm and dedicated her life from 2016-2024 to the Run For Something kind of aesthetic of trying to reform local politics first, recently (this week) succumbed to a prolonged fight with cancer, and it's incredibly sad and depressing and at least I know she's not seeing what's happening now, but I'm like. Well.
Well I'm taking my cancer screenings seriously I guess. Hers was a special case with many contributing factors but oh my gosh it was brutal and they tried everything and she fought so hard and god, how draining. I said goodbye to her in November, and she was so cheerful about it because that's the kind of person she was. My sister and BIL were taking some of the shifts to sit with her toward the end, so her family could sleep sometimes. It's just so brutal. So.
One thing: this is only the second time I've managed to go get a mammogram, but the form is the same. on the form, they want you to attest: I am not pregnant. And then they give you three boxes you can choose from, for how you can prove to them that you are not pregnant. One: I am postmenopausal. Two: I use an effective birth control. (List it here.) Three: I have undergone surgical contraception/sterilization (List date of procedure).
None of these is the extremely, incredibly common scenario that happens to be my scenario, which is My partner has undergone sterilization and I am monogamous. Which I understand is not foolproof-- if you are lying or in some other way not actually living up to the second part of that statement (I myself have in idle thought exercises fallen victim to the extending my I-can't-get-pregnant-by-accident relief to scenarios that of course would not be covered by it; I'm sure many people over the ages have absentmindedly forgotten that their Foolproof Birth Control that affects only their partners actually makes it *more* important that they avoid all contact with anyone else.) But good Christ if I am lying, even to mysef, then this form is void. It kind of drives me nuts every time and I know they don't really care it's a CYA form but oh my god. (There's also no option for I am not sexually active or I am not sexually active with a partner who could impregnate me, which are also both foolproof and common scenarios!)
But as for colon cancer screenings, I'm gonna put that behind a cut.
There's this newfangled thing right. You can either go in for a colonoscopy, which is a routine and basic and fine normal thing people do all the time don't even worry about it, OR they can send you a kit where you submit your uh relevant excreta for testing and they look at it and find out if you have the DNA or other markers of cancer in that, and it's good for only 3 years instead of the 10 that a colonoscopy is good for, but I was like well, I will try that and see how it goes.
Friends. Friends. I thought, I am a person who, due to my lifestyle, quite often shits in a bucket in the woods, I am not precious about my toileting facilities, to be perfectly blunt. But I discovered that it is extremely difficult to contemplate shitting in a box in your own house, and then taking that box, nicely-packaged as it is, and sealing it up all nice and bringing it to a UPS store to drop off, and the outside of it has the testing company's logo and slogan, which mention the colon, prominently emblazoned.
It was not trivial. And at one point, as I struggled with my body's reluctance, I thought, it would probably have been better to take the turbolaxatives they give you, and the indicator liquid, and go and get buttwanded in a hospital. So I will do that next time.
All this is just to say, when you reach the appropriate age for such a thing, do not fall victim to thinking "shitting in a box at home sounds way easier than shitting for twelve hours and then going and being sedated in a hospital" like, by default. It may well be, you may well have really good reasons to think that, but my gosh. It was not as much easier as I'd expected.
(It's not really shitting in a box they send you a whole kit with the collection container and a sample thingy and preservative and a sealing lid and a hundred pages of instructions and a video you can watch that's sort of disturbingly clean and smiley but like. In the end. It's you, and this box, and your sense of self.) (Actually it would have been significantly easier for me to have done this in the woods than in my own house, now I think back on it. Context is king.)
anyway. anyway.
oh and. am i insane or did doctors used to be able to send prescriptions/referrals straight to the other facility? I showed up for my mammogram having left the piece of paper the doctor gave me about it on the kitchen table at home, and said as much to the receptionist. "Should I drive home and get it?" I asked-- 22 minutes each way-- and she said no no, i'll call them, but i have to call them, I can't go ahead and do the test without the thing. Best if i can speak directly to them and get a verbal approval. (What? do we not have emails anymore?)
She came to me and was like "they're not picking up and I have to check in other customers, can you call them" so of course when I called them I got right through, and they said oh we can send it, but the fax doesn't always work, so if you need a verbal, call right back and we'll pick up. I wanted to hand the phone straight to this receptionist but she was checking in a disoriented 84-year-old and I felt I really couldn't break in. So I hung up, the receptionist then said the fax thing hadn't worked, so I called back. The phone rang until it automatically hung up.
The confused 84-year-old who'd arrived after me went in for her screening. The sixtysomething with a cane who'd come in after her went in for her screening. The thirtysomething with impeccable nails who'd come in later than either of them went in for her screening.
20 minutes on hold later, I finally got through, to a different person at the doctor's office who could not understand what I wanted, did not know what to do, I finally handed my phone over to the receptionist at the radiology clinic, who managed to convey to this person what we needed.
God, I miss the like. halcyon good old days of 2012 when they could actually electronically send one another forms. And when not everyone was so horrifyingly understaffed that the prerecorded phone thing had twenty minutes of material on it because they know they won't get to your call.
Nobody wants to work anymore I guess????
Ugh. It was incredibly stressful and time-consuming and meant that I was so sweaty by the time the tech was trying to take images of me that she yelled at me for having put product on. (No ma'am, that's just stress sweat, you told me I couldn't have deodorant remember?) Had to baby-wipe myself off and then dry off on the ludicrous hospital gown. Ay yi yi. But I got my squashed glamor shots, and I am here to reassure you that all those horror stories about mammograms hurting are really for itty bitty titty types, if you have gazongas you can just plunk up there & it's a ton easier for them to get good pictures. So don't worry. It's not pleasant but like, i can basically stand outside the room while they're doing it. (No, this is hyperbole. I did take ibuprofen afterward but there were other contributing factors. My first time, when I was not so sweaty and stressed last year, was much easier.)
i am getting a lot of writing done. much of it is The Wrong Thing but it's all good. it's all good.
🚨MAMOGRAPHY IS THE BIGGEST ORGANIZED CRIME AGAINST WOMEN!!
Women who go for mammograms are probably unaware of the harm they do to themsel
🚨MAMOGRAPHY IS THE BIGGEST ORGANIZED CRIME AGAINST WOMEN!!
Women who go for mammograms are probably unaware of the harm they do to themselves 😩
A few details to consider before deciding on a review:
✅ 50-60% of the “positive” results are incorrect!!
So, being diagnosed with “breast cancer” in 50-60% of cases, turns out it didn’t exist at all!!
✅ during examination, the breast is pressed with a large weight of 10kPa (1019 kg / m2) and then healthy, very sensitive, milk gland tissue is bombarded by radioactive rays!!
✅ stimulates tumor growth and the spread of metastases!!
✅ study done on 690,000 records showed that completely healthy women have developed breast cancer in a large number of cases after mammographic examinations!!
✅ Switzerland is the first country in the world to ban mammographic examinations❗️
So the criminal medical mafia is aggressively forcing regular annual mammography examinations of healthy women, in order to make them profitable patients!!
Even my late mother, who had been dealing with this for her entire career, realized near the end of her life that she was unknowingly an accomplice in this greatest medical crime against women❗️
RESEARCH YOURSELF AND THINK WELL ABOUT WHAT YOU DO TO YOURSELF 🙏
Ontario is lowering the age for regular, publicly funded breast cancer screenings from 50 to 40, which Health Minister Sylvia Jones says wil
Ontario is lowering the age for regular, publicly funded breast cancer screenings from 50 to 40, which Health Minister Sylvia Jones says will help with early detection.
Jones said Monday that the expansion will mean an additional 130,000 mammograms are completed in the province each year.
"Nearly 12,000 Ontarians are diagnosed with breast cancer each and every year," she said at a news conference announcing the change.
"We know early detection through regular screening with mammograms can save lives, detecting breast cancer before it has the chance to spread, and with this historic expansion more mammograms will be performed each and every year, ensuring breast cancer is caught earlier and treated sooner."
I had my first mammogram today and it went just fine. It wasn't painful at all, and the technician showed me an image she captured of one of my tits and all the veins and stuff inside it!
(IDK for sure which tit it was, but it looked great so I'm guessing it was the left one. It's my superior boob.)
And the best news: Nothing out of the ordinary showed up.
...I do kinda wish I could've gotten a copy of that image she showed me, though.
Ppl always laugh when i talk about my titties but they rly are shaped to be shoved thru a mail slot, i have to get my first mammogram this year and tbh it's what my titties were designed to do.
More young women are getting breast cancer. They want answers.
Kelsey Kaminky first noticed a small lump in her left breast in November. It felt like a misshapen marble. Given her young age, her doctor suspected it was a benign cyst and told her further testing wouldn’t be needed.
But Kaminky, 32, couldn’t shake a bad feeling. She insisted on getting a mammogram. “I advocated for myself because I knew, I just knew,” she said.
The lump was breast cancer.
Quick personal recap:
Started mammos at 30.
Caught pre-invasive at 36, bilateral mastectomy 3 months later. No bras, no regrets. Negative for any known associated gene mutation. Mother had stage 1 breast cancer at 48.
Full disclosure while we're on the topic, these were my surgeries:
Bilateral mastectomy and sentinel node biopsy (6) with immediate reconstruction with expanders for future implants.
Expanders removed nearly a year later due to extreme and constant complications.
First revision surgery 3 years after mastectomy.
Second revision surgery 5 years after mastectomy. Now finally flat enough for a nice tattoo canvas starting soon!
Doctors who say "You're too young to have cancer" are shitheads. And America is a shithole capitalist country.
I don't know why the above article and society at large have ignored this link between Black women using hair relaxer and as a result developing aggressive breast cancer. Just immediately buried.
Black women could be at higher risk of breast cancer due to frequent use of lye-based hair straighteners. A group of epidemiologists explain
