I am blessed to go to the Robert Wood Johnson Women’s Center for “the annual”, which is a very comfortable, relaxed atmosphere. I’m actually a friend of one of the technicians who performs the procedures, which is a bit weird – having a familiar face doing the pushing and prodding and plopping and placing… I felt as if I needed to be at least taken out for dinner afterwards! But Liz is a very sweet and soft-spoken dear-hearted woman – exactly the personality you need for “The Big M”. I mean, really, do you want a perfect stranger to ask you to tape two ball bearings in the most strategic of places and then ever-so-gently help you embrace the cold, hard steel that is about to turn your orbs into plates? Lunch anyone? Surely you can imagine my fear of forgetting to remove my new Lady Gaga-ish accessories and getting in an accident! I just imagine the EMTs tearing off my top to do some sort of electro-plated “CLEAR” maneuver, only to say, “Okay, get the paddles, and OHH MY!!!! What do we have here?” It’s not pretty.
Speaking of not pretty, I’ve finally realized that the reason they call them Ta-Tas is because as the years progress and they move ever-southward, you just wave goodbye to what once was right “up there” and, with a tear in your eye, exclaim, ‘Ta-Ta, girls!” And let me tell you, once the procedure was done my poor bubalas were now boo-boo-las! Can someone plueezzee explain to me why we must go through this yearly schmooshing when we can figure out how to put a man on the moon? We still haven’t invented a more comfortable way to screen women for breast cancer? Don’t even get me started on how quickly the inspiration would come if men had to… ah-hem… take their little orbs and place them between two stainless steel bricks as someone said, “Oh, let me know if that’s too tight…” Sorry, boys, with all due respect, bend over and cough doesn’t even BEGIN to equalize the discomfort factor, okay? As my friend Pam says, ‘nuff said!
However, truth be told, it wasn’t bad at all, and when I think about my dear friends who have lost one or both breasts to cancer, or their lives, this is the smallest of prices to pay for my health and “the girls”. It makes you think, doesn’t it? And being the wild woman I am, I have resolved that should I ever be faced with the unthinkable, I will go through reconstructive surgery so that I will remain, as Christina Applegate so beautifully said it, “perky for life!”
So please, dear sisters, be sure to get your annual mammogram, and encourage every woman you know to do the same. Take them, go together, make a day of it and afterwards have lunch and toast the Ta-Tas! YOU’RE WORTH IT! (Oh yeah, remember to remove the ball bearings.) Well, I'm off with my hot pink duct tape to go try and craft two slings for the boo-boo-las!
Blessings,
Linda
For further information on breast cancer and mammograms, please visit this website: http://www.nationalbreastcancer.org/
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