Mammogram, anyone?

Picture taken from http://www.endalldisease.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/mammogram-720.jpg

Now I know what a panino feels like.

Last week, as I was busy typing away on my laptop, hoping what I was writing actually made sense, I received a text message from my brother's girlfriend, asking if I wanted a free mammogram. The hospital where she works had just bought a new machine, and they were willing to use it to screen women from forty and above for free.

Like any red-blooded Filipino I jumped at the mere mention of the word "libre" - or free (or gratis for our Spanish-speaking readers). My insurance does cover it, but the thought of getting it for nothing, thrilled me.

So early Monday morning, I found myself in the car with my brother and my husband, on our way to Pampanga. Perhaps the idea of mammogram + road trip seemed more appealing to me than just mammogram alone. We were pulling up at the hospital parking at exactly nine o'clock. I wasn't nervous or anything, but it was to be my first mammogram. I didn't know what to expect.

But I remained surprisingly calm, more anxious of what the results might say, than of the actual procedure. I had heard of mammogram horror stories but I thought to myself that it just had to be done. According to the Philippine Society of Medical Oncology "The country has the highest incidence of breast cancer in the continent and an estimated 3 out of 100 Filipino women will contract the disease before age 75; 1 out of 100 will die before age 75." (Source: http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/329126/cbb/phl-has-highest-breast-cancer-rate-in-asia ) It is a scary statistic, and I can only imagine what women with breast cancer are going through.

No one wants to hear bad news, especially not news which tells us we have cancer. But like what my friend Emilie keeps telling me, early detection is better than a late one. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010. On her birthday. How cruel could fate be? But where is she now? What is she doing during holidays? Where is she on weekends? She's living life to the fullest! She travels, she paints, she watches how-to "makeup" videos on YouTube. She has plans for her future, and all this is possible because of early detection.

So even if having a mammogram feels like being a human panino, it is well worth it. The small sacrifice we have to make now, could mean a longer life ahead of us.

P.S. I felt no pain during the mammogram, only very light pressure. :-)