I was having coffee with a friend of mine today, and she was telling me about the mammogram she had on Monday afternoon. She confessed to me that while she doesn't really worry about the health of her breasts during most of the year, scheduling a mammogram, and then waiting for the results make her really nervous and antsy.
Mind you, my friend could be the poster child for the breast self-examination--she is religious about doing her exam every single month on the same exact day of her cycle. She has no family history of breast cancer, nor does she have really any of the risk factors. And she had just had a clinical exam last week at her OB/GYN and everything felt normal. And speaking of the annual exam, she said getting a pap smear and waiting for those results is no big deal at all. It's just the mammogram that gets her all riled up.
Listening to her talk got me to thinking about her feelings, and if they are fairly common, so I wanted to post her story on here to see if anyone else has this same reaction to mammograms. If so, why do you suppose it happens? I asked my friend if she knew where her anxiety might be coming from, and she said it's probably because breast cancer is talked about all of the time in magazine articles and other places, and as she put it "it's like it's standing on a dark corner waiting to jump out at us."
I really do feel for her. I don't think I get as nervous as she does, but I sure do like to get that phone call each time telling me that the results are, thank God, normal. And I know in my heart my friend's results will be just fine too.