“So you just turned 40, I want you to go have a mammogram,” says my doctor at my annual physical just after my 40th birthday.
“That’s not necessary is it?” I scrunch up my face.
“What, it doesn’t hurt, don’t be a wimp,” she replies.
“Oh, you’ve had one?”
“Well, nooo…”
Fucking doctors. Who’s with me on the idea that every general practitioner should, during their medical training, have to experience every test they could potentially send a patient for? Not the actual mammogram with the scan, but everything up to that point, including the boob sandwich (male doctors too), as well as a colonoscopy, and a partial toenail removal.
“So how do you know it doesn’t hurt?”
She sighs. “I don’t, but you have a family history of breast cancer from your grandmother, so let’s be safe.”
I can’t honestly remember now if my grandmother had breast cancer or not. I think she did, but she had so many other cancers, along with pneumonia, diabetes, and tuberculosis at one point, that, sure, better to be safe than sorry. And it can’t be that bad, right?
In Toronto: