Sun's out, boobs out
It's time for a mammogram
God! These past few nights have been dramatic, haven’t they? Gales just howled at the weekend and into Monday, and our scaffolding rattled for hours. Things went skittering off the railings and into the garden - tradies’ gloves and bits of plywood and those perforated paper circles from new cans of paint. I woke up to long twists of plastic in the cherry tree.
It’s not the best time to have large sections of guttering missing, as we do, or downpipes rustier than the Titanic. With nowhere to collect, plumes of water poured off the eaves, frothing into pools at the front and back doors. I’m in sole charge of the house and kids for a couple of weeks and I lost a bit of sleep over it all.
Oddly, an empty can of Sprite on an upper platform didn’t budge a centimetre. It’s been sitting there three months now, placid in all weathers, when by rights it should have blown to Palmerston North.
I’m obsessed by it.
The weather led the news again this week, though Karori dodged the worst of the relentless rain. The sun is radiantly out today and there are new signs of spring everywhere. Drifts of pollen on the car in the mornings. Magnolias blooming all over the block. Dangling yellow Kōwhai flowers outside Maddie’s bedroom. And daffodils for sale, three dollars a bunch, halfway along the road to Mākara.
Still, those nasty winter viruses are in no hurry to leave town. George’s primary school called me to come and collect him last week. He was oddly pink in the cheeks, complaining of a headache and a tickly throat. Kids in his class have been dropping like ninepins, with all sorts of bugs flying around.
I’m an alarmist when it comes to my children, so I did a mercy dash to the shops for lozenges and the cloudy kind of ginger beer. I also bought one of those Covid kits that test for multiple infections like Influenza A and B, syphilis, and dengue fever. George mostly spent the weekend in a dressing gown, sucking popsicles like cigars. He told me he might need a notebook, as talking was becoming too much to bear.
I took him cornflakes on a tray in bed for breakfast. He waved the jug and croaked, “More milk.” Then he asked to watch Pulp Fiction.
I think he’s going to make it.
New Zealand’s national breast screening service rang me today. Cleverly, they don’t offer caller identification. My mum also has an unlisted number, so I assumed it was her and picked up. But no; it was a hearty voice belonging to Sharon, wanting to book my next mammogram. Rats!
“Has my time come around again?” I said, more jauntily than I felt.
“Yep! It’s time for a squeeze,” she replied.
How we laughed!
I’m usually a trouper when it comes to intimate medical procedures. I deal with the shyness of being undressed by talking incessantly to the doctor about nothing, or by asking distracting questions. I am absolutely Olympic at this, coming across as unbothered, when in fact I’m dying inside.
In stirrups, during labour, I complimented the anaesthetist on her hippo Crocs and asked the obstetrician, who had ducked out for McDonald’s, what his order had been. I also quoted Nora Ephron between groans. The line goes something like, ‘When you have a teenager, get a dog, because then at least somebody in the house will be happy to see you.’ Everyone on the medical team loved that.
How we laughed! WHILE I WAS HAVING A BABY.
In less-eventful midlife there’ll be hopefully far fewer opportunities for clean-cut medical graduates in their twenties and thirties to gaze deep into my fundamentals, taking notes. Did you know we even have do-it-yourself smear-testing now? (Good Lord! You just swab your own banjo, while standing up!) So, I can also dodge that particular triennial embarrassment.
But, a mammogram. A mammogram is peak cringe, even for me. I wouldn’t say it’s painful, but it’s uncomfortable. The technician really has to get in there between images and rearrange your breasts on the plate - we’re talking handsy, like a pizza chef pummelling dough. And I’ve got to tell you, it’s startling to experience someone whose name you don’t know cupping your breast in their palm in the middle of the day. Especially if you live in Karori.
I can’t speak for curvy women and I’m sure it’s no picnic for them, but the humiliation for someone less, shall we say, blessed with fleshy glands, is that your size presents a challenge to any technician. The number of times each of my breasts had to be walloped into different shapes simply to register on the monitor, let alone to take a clear image, would make a dove cry.
And can you imagine having a modest breast enclosed by a behemoth scanning machine when there’s nothing fatty for the machine to sandwich? You don’t have to imagine, because I’ll tell you. It’s like having your nipple slammed in a panini toaster.
And then, after she manages to shoehorn you in (you’re kind of bent over at this point with one arm cocked, your breast tugged forward like you’re a donkey being pulled by a halter) the tech stands around puzzling, and then calls her offsider over for a look, and they go into the viewing room and frown at each other and she comes back muttering that they have to do it all over again, and somehow you - you, with your bee-stings for bosoms, your lack of rack, your B-cup on a very good day, are responsible for all this extra bother.
I mean, nobody would dream of saying it. But you’re thinking they’re thinking it, so it must be happening.
This is the worst bit. Not being undressed and photographed only metres from the bustle of Lambton Quay, Wellington’s premier shopping precinct. No - getting your baps out was the easy part. The hard part is feeling that the world isn’t really designed for you. You’re tolerated, but you and your weird needs are also a lot. Nobody else is having this much trouble at life.
Only you.
I would like to take this opportunity to urge every New Zealand woman aged 45 to 69 to register for a free biennial mammogram, if you haven’t already. I mean this sincerely - it could save your life. I’d like to thank Sharon at BreastScreen NZ and every medical imaging technologist, for their important work.
Go on, get it done. Then have a panini and think of me.
I was in that same imaging centre on Lambton Quay only a few weeks ago! Stripping off multiple layers of clothes from the freezing morning outside, waiting to be squeezed between two chilly layers of metal and painfully reminded that my once plump and cheerful E cups are now oddly thin and saggy but still E cups (how does that work?).
Did it hurt? F yes. Did I go back to work and look happy and tell my workmates how good our Breastscreening NZ service is? Hell yes.
I have the opposite situation Leah. Buxom, busty or just extra, there’s plenty of boob age and they are lumpy and tender to boot. I no longer qualify for the free mammogram but vividly remember an appointment at Hutt Hosp years ago when the tech was downright rude about my double D’s. I declined to go back and thereafter went to Newtown instead.
My darling daughter was diagnosed with BC in her forties and has now got the all clear but that was an awful shock.
Go and get that mammogram, it’s uncomfortable but necessary.
A great read, thanks.