This is a question that I am asked every time I go to my oncologist. My answer remains the same: "2007." The nurse always, without fail, echoes my response, but in an incredulous tone: "2007??"
I guess to say that eight years has passed since one's last mammogram is not a typical response. Then I always add, with a hopeful approval-seeking tone, "But I had a thermogram in the summer of 2013." A typical response to that statement is: "I don't know what that is..." or "We don't record that data." In western AMA-fed medicine, to refuse to have mammograms tends to label one as a fool, or a kook. I know that, in my initial visit with my oncologist, I must have been labeled somehow. Not sure how these people communicate with each other... perhaps in big red letters across a person's chart. But labeled I was. Because when I first visited the surgeon recommended by my oncologist, he had obviously been forewarned; his very first words to me were: "So.... I see here (looking at the chart, not at me, as I sat there meeting him for the first time in my lovely, white, scratchy-paper, neck-to-waist drape)... I see here that you don't believe in mammograms." (Those of you who have read all of my blogs from the beginning will remember how I locked horns with this surgeon! Can you see why?)
Ok, so that makes me wonder. Just what DID it say in that chart, which obviously contained information relayed to the surgeon from my oncologist? "Watch out... this one is a problem child"....or.... "Trouble ahead, prepare to be challenged."
When I showed the surgeon the record of my recent thermogram, he responded "I don't read these. I have no idea what this means." Wow.
Before I ever received a cancer diagnosis, I was reading many articles and books that revealed growing evidence that mammography did more harm than good. Since many have asked why I do not "believe" in mammography, as the surgeon did (like it's a religion of some kind?), I am attaching a link here that is fairly short, but outlines briefly the problems with the practice, at least in my view.
Mammograms are more harmful than you think
If you are interested in learning more about the evidence against mammography, it's out there. Just do a bit of research on your own.
Interestingly, way back in October when I had my biopsy at Holy Cross Hospital, after the procedure was over, the nurse said, "Now, Ms. Reed, please come with me to Radiology." Why? I asked.
"For your mammogram." Whoa there, Dobbin! What, says I? You have just cut me in not one, but two places (tumor site and lymph node), I have two bandages now covering two surgical biopsy wounds, and you want to do what? Give me a mammogram?
Now, obviously, this poor nurse who was just "following orders" hadn't read my chart -- that I do not "do mammograms." But that info notwithstanding.... folks, it is standard procedure (at least at this hospital) to perform mammography on a woman who has just had a surgical biopsy of the breast! I was stunned by this.
Evidently, this is just "what they do" at Holy Cross. I guess they have a technician who makes big bucks right down the hall sitting next to very expensive equipment. What a gold mine -- to take every breast-cancer-patient lamb to the slaughter of the great squeeze machine. And the purpose of this is... what? To detect cancer? I asked the nurse, "Isn't this what the biopsy is all about? And wouldn't it be barbaric (and potentially harmful to the already-disturbed tumor area) to do this immediately after the biopsy?"
Even the nurse had to admit that it didn't make much sense. But alas, that is what is "ordered" after every breast cancer biopsy. Obviously, I refused to comply with this order.
Alas... another red warning in huge block letters on my chart. Sigh.
No comments:
Post a Comment