No, I'm not talking about the squishing of the breast between the platen and the plate. Is is pleasant? No, but I understand why it must be done and I can handle it. Like most breast cancer survivors, I tell them to squish my breast as hard as they can, and usually the tech's eyes get very large when I don't even whimper at the amount of pressure they administer.
What hurts more than this...and which is annoying because I think it can be easily fixed, is that the second view is taken at an angle. The machine is rotate and you are supposed to hang onto the handle (which I sort of drew a maroon line to on the top)....the bottom maroon line points to the edge of the platen. See the shape? This pokey corner gets shoved into your armpit. Tightly. Painfully. And the thing which bugs me the most is that if this edge could be rounded, it would hurt a whole heck of a lot less. It doesn't come into play with the dead-on view...but man oh man does it hurt when that corner digs into the tender spot under your arm....all the while your breast is getting squished...but this armpit thingy hurts me more than the squishing....and it hurts my brain to think that this might probably be easily solved...if only the designers had to have a mammogram done on themselves with what they design....
So wake up you makers of mammogram machines! Please develop something that is less of a torture device...especially if part of the torture comes from something which isn't an integral part of the test.
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You should definitely send this to manufacturers.
ReplyDeleteI have always considered myself to have a high tolerance for pain; however, mammograms hurt for weeks and months afterwards. Really, they can't find a better way? There are just no words to explain, unless you have had one. There has to be a better way, I just don't think the makers of these machines care about the abuse they really are.
ReplyDeleteI'm short and have large dense breasts: the mammogram hurts me so much I nearly threw up last time I had one. A LOT of the discomfort is not about the squshing but rather about the positon one must get into and hold WHILE their held helpless by their tit! The machine is just too big, too full of corners, too stiff, too unyeilding and merciless.
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