Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Let the Dog Sniff Me... i.e. according to Harper's Magazine stats, certain cancer-detecting dogs are more effective detecting cancer than anything modern western medicine can bring to the table. They're cheaper and cuter too.
After many years not bothering to go for a mamography, peer pressure finally cajoled me into going for a check-up. Geez, what a f***** scam. Here's what happens: they change you into putrid-green gowns of such an unbecoming shade that you begin to feel sick even if you are not. Then they make you wait with Judge Judy blaring her verdicts on the TV to barely literate morons. So now in addition to feeling sick, you are starting to go insane. You begin to leaf through old editions of House Garden and Ladies Home Journal -- insipid enough fare that you can't quite get the other women in the waiting room out of your peripheral. Are they there for just a routine check? Which one discovered a lump?
Anna Bloviation's was in for boob-squeeze Numero 2 after a nurse called to leave a soft-spoken, urgent sounding message that they would like to take a look a the right boob again following boob-squeeze Numero 1. Reluctantly, we enter into the boob imagery room and submit to painful sessions of trying to squeeze really-rather-petite boobs into 21st century machinery not much different from torture stretching machines of medieval times.
Suffice to say, Anna Bloviations has no intention of ever again submitting her right boob to any kind of machine intent on squishing it to painful submission. Especially given the aftermath. The aftermath entails sitting in the waiting room wondering what is taking the radiologist so long to diagnose your second set of pics to the point that even as a born-diehard-optimist, you can't help but begin to wonder if you don't have, gulp, the "C" word. Of course when we go across the hall to ask how much longer it might be because we've left the son waiting at Target to be picked up, we discover the radiologist and technicians having a nice chat about the Red Sox.
Now I'm on to them. They make you wait so long so you'll get frantically worried and then agree to ANYTHING they tell you they want to do with you in the future (especially if they know you have good insurance). "It'll be just two minutes," one of the technicians says gravely, but not entirely convincingly given he was just caught talking in an equally grave voice about an errant baseball player. When finally called in, the radiologist tries his best to regain the upper hand given that annoyance, rather than fear, is what meets him across the table. "Well there are these two very tiny specs which might possibly be calcium deposits. But on these other shots you can't even see them. So just to be sure we'd like you to come back in in six months....." Yeah right. I'm looking in the Yellow Pages for cancer-sniffing dogs thank you very much.
After many years not bothering to go for a mamography, peer pressure finally cajoled me into going for a check-up. Geez, what a f***** scam. Here's what happens: they change you into putrid-green gowns of such an unbecoming shade that you begin to feel sick even if you are not. Then they make you wait with Judge Judy blaring her verdicts on the TV to barely literate morons. So now in addition to feeling sick, you are starting to go insane. You begin to leaf through old editions of House Garden and Ladies Home Journal -- insipid enough fare that you can't quite get the other women in the waiting room out of your peripheral. Are they there for just a routine check? Which one discovered a lump?
Anna Bloviation's was in for boob-squeeze Numero 2 after a nurse called to leave a soft-spoken, urgent sounding message that they would like to take a look a the right boob again following boob-squeeze Numero 1. Reluctantly, we enter into the boob imagery room and submit to painful sessions of trying to squeeze really-rather-petite boobs into 21st century machinery not much different from torture stretching machines of medieval times.
Suffice to say, Anna Bloviations has no intention of ever again submitting her right boob to any kind of machine intent on squishing it to painful submission. Especially given the aftermath. The aftermath entails sitting in the waiting room wondering what is taking the radiologist so long to diagnose your second set of pics to the point that even as a born-diehard-optimist, you can't help but begin to wonder if you don't have, gulp, the "C" word. Of course when we go across the hall to ask how much longer it might be because we've left the son waiting at Target to be picked up, we discover the radiologist and technicians having a nice chat about the Red Sox.
Now I'm on to them. They make you wait so long so you'll get frantically worried and then agree to ANYTHING they tell you they want to do with you in the future (especially if they know you have good insurance). "It'll be just two minutes," one of the technicians says gravely, but not entirely convincingly given he was just caught talking in an equally grave voice about an errant baseball player. When finally called in, the radiologist tries his best to regain the upper hand given that annoyance, rather than fear, is what meets him across the table. "Well there are these two very tiny specs which might possibly be calcium deposits. But on these other shots you can't even see them. So just to be sure we'd like you to come back in in six months....." Yeah right. I'm looking in the Yellow Pages for cancer-sniffing dogs thank you very much.
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