How to prepare for a mammogram

A friend sent me this advice regarding mammograms.

Many women are afraid of their first mammogram, but there is no need to worry. By taking a few minutes each day for a week preceding the exam and doing the following exercises, you will be totally prepared for the test and best of all, you can do these simple exercises right in and around your home.

EXERCISE ONE:

Open your refrigerator door and insert one breast in door. Shut the door as hard as possible and lean on the door for good measure. Hold that position for five seconds. Repeat again in case the first time wasn't effective enough.

EXERCISE TWO:

Visit your garage at 3AM when the temperature of the cement floor is just perfect. Take off all your clothes and lie comfortably on the floor with one breast wedged under the rear tire of the car. Ask a friend to slowly back the car up until your breast is sufficiently flattened and chilled. Turn over and repeat with the other breast.

EXERCISE THREE:

Freeze two metal bookends overnight. Strip to the waist. Invite a stranger into the room. Press the bookends against one of your  breasts. Smash the bookends together as  hard as you can. Set up an  appointment with the stranger to meet next year and do it again.

You are now totally prepared.

(Thanks, Lindsay.)

The Cornish Mermaid roadshow

I wouldn't want to holiday in one, but the other day I walked past the latest in Cornish fancy caravans - a new breast screening unit - and it made me glad. It was sparkly NHS-blue and white, and proclaimed its ability to bring "care closer to your home". It was sitting outside the Mermaid Centre, Cornwall's wonderful breast screening clinic.

I like the idea of the Mermaid Roadshow. Instead of traipsing in to Truro, sometimes on rural buses that turn a half hour journey into three, women will be able to have their mammograms (and results) on their doorstep. I hope they remember to take the tea urn and the custard creams that we get at the Mermaid. Music would be good too - when I went for my first mammogram, the music ranged from Ella Fitzgerald to Neil Diamond. It took my mind off things. I suppose it would be a bit much to expect them to install an aquarium and a few paintings here and there. Oh well. What the roadshow's got that the Mermaid hasn't is proximity to your bed: you'll be able to leave the screening unit and know that in a relatively shorter time you can roll into bed and throw the covers over your head, leaving Neil Diamond, Ella Fitzgerald and the custard creams behind you.

The melon spoon myth

I have to hold my hands up in the air and admit to perpetuating the Melon Spoon Myth. Before my mastectomy and reconstruction, I had tried to make sense of the oncoplastic jargon in my breast surgery handbook but to no avail. Because I knew the tissue in my breast had been removed via my areola (TMI? Leave now),  I invented my own theory: they must have scooped it out using a melon spoon. Once again, my surgeon has put me straight. 

Apparently the skin is so amazingly stretchy that, yes, in my case they cut out the areola, but then they make flaps in the skin (think peeling an orange with a nice sharp knife) and peel it back to make a sizeable hole so they can easily cut the tissue away from the breast wall.  I had what’s known in the trade as an extended LD flap reconstruction. Apparently LD stands for the latissimus dorsi (back) muscle that's used to replace the old breast tissue. Flap is the key word here though: I know because my surgeon drew me a picture on a paper towel. 

I didn’t want any silicon or foreign objects to form my new breast, which is why I opted for using my own raw materials. During my surgery, they cut into my back and wrestled out my latissimus dorsi, swung it under my armpit using the blood vessels as a pivot and – ta da! – my new breast was born. It might have been a bit more complicated than that. But at least they didn’t scoop up the back muscle with the melon spoon and squish it back through the tiny hole of an areola, as I had imagined they did. Phew.