Mammogram: Over 50 boobs in a 12-hour workday

During October, the world celebrated a week in support of breastfeeding. I stopped in one evening during that period when about 18 moms, dads and even more babes dined together in celebration at Acton’s Restaurant in Wolfville.

I don’t think the waiters knew what had hit them, but as

professionals they rolled with the punches. Public health nurse Johanna Dinnesen-McLeod said the other diners did, as well, and everybody had a great time.

Since my kids are grown now -- two are well over six feet tall -- that quick stop made me reflect how much things have changed in a generation.

During my first pregnancy one of my co-workers puffed away on cigarettes at the next desk. Nobody questioned the effect of alcohol on a human in utero.

Since my mother and mother-in-law modelled breastfeeding, I had never pondered that decision, but the workings of a maternal body at birth and after still strike me as miraculous. It was the only time in my life that I ever needed to wear a bra.

Now that I’m in the over 50 age group, I have to haul my mammary glands to get zapped every couple of years. My friend Wendy and I decided to book appointments together as a kind of female bonding excursion. We went to the portable trailer that takes mammogram equipment all over Nova Scotia. The technicians there check out 50 boobs in a 12-hour day.

While we waited our turn between the compression plates, the two of us giggled over the reading material we found. Featured were a magazine on the bikini diet and a People’s issue of the best bodies on the beach. One of them was a good distraction.

On your turn, you have to drop any sense of modesty – as you do when giving birth. The technician tapes a metal dot on each nipple, then she has to squish each breast to the right angle. They are keen to get a good image of the upper quad – that’s where most cancers are found – but ouch! Waiting for the all clear, I contorted my face like

a Halloween mask since I couldn’t follow my first inclination which was to run.

In the United States, doctors are expressing concern because women are getting mammograms at declining rates. Canadian women don’t have to worry about the expense, but discomfort is another reason for the lower numbers.

Radiologists are quite certain that the early detection of breast cancer should outweigh the discomfort of having a mammogram. It is the growing number of cure stories that should over ride that momentary ouch.

As long as one in every eight women develop breast cancer, we have to seek out that trailer and that exam. Afterwards Wendy and I toasted ourselves for doing that due diligence with a glass of wine.

Meanwhile, I hear that new breast CT scans are coming. Some day it might well to possible to get a three-dimensional image lying face down without any compression. Something else for women to drink to.