Oliver: Don’t put off that mammogram; breast cancer can be much, much worse

Mammograms, I must admit, are not the most natural thing in the world to experience.

Awkward indeed. It’s up close and personal with a machine in an unnatural position while holding your breath. For some women, it might be a bit uncomfortable, even painful, for a few seconds.

That’s that complaint I’ve been hearing from some of the younger members of my family, who are now eligible for this female rite of passage, and some of my former co-workers.

I’ll admit that I was one of those people who put it off.

Breast cancer doesn’t run in my family, I told myself. I’m not overweight, and I don’t eat a lot of junk.

Mostly, though, I considered myself too busy to bother. After all, my mother came to live with me and she had dementia. With all of her doctor’s appointments, I just didn’t find the time to fit it a screening mammogram. Then my husband was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease. So there was that, too.

I had a whole lot of excuses for not going to get that mammogram.

Then one day in March 2019, I had to make an emergency run to the doctor for a different girl problem I was having.

The nurse practitioner who was able to get me in that day was doing a breast exam and stopped. “Do you know you have a lump on your right breast?” she asked, matter-of-factly.

Uh, no. Can’t say that I did. Can’t say that I ever felt anything out of the ordinary when I tried to do those self-exams that always are recommended. Or if I did, I somehow convinced myself that there was something exactly the same on the other side.

I was given an order for a mammogram, which the nurse practitioner folded in half as she gave it to me. She told me to focus on the problem I came in for, but not to wait too long on that mammogram.

Maybe it was nothing, I kept telling myself. However, I dutifully made the appointment.

It wasn’t for a screening mammogram. No, I had already graduated to the more intense diagnostic mammogram.

Not surprisingly, it found about a 2-centimeter lump on my right breast and calcifications on my left.

That same day, I also got to have an ultrasound of that right breast. The doctor came back with the news that my lump was most likely malignant.

And so began the journey that included an ultrasound-guided needle biopsy of my lump, and MRI that showed the extent of calcifications on my left breast and then another biopsy of the left side.

Then I had a double lumpectomy to remove the lump on my right side and to make sure the left side was not malignant too. I also had a few lymph nodes removed on the right side to verify that my cancer had not spread beyond the breast. Happily, it had not.

After I healed enough, I then went through a month of radiation treatments on my right side.

The final verdict: I had stage 1 cancer on my right side and stage 0 on the left.

Since my tumor was considered to be fueled by estrogen, I’m on daily medication to suppress my hormones, and I receive a monthly shot to do that, too.

I’m about two years into the medications, so I have three more years to go before I’m considered cancer-free.

In the meantime, I am more than willing to undergo my yearly mammograms. At first, I had to get them every six months.

If all of that sounds exhausting, it was. And let’s not for one second forget that I did not have an aggressive form of cancer. I never had to do chemotherapy. My heart goes out to those who do.

So whenever I hear anyone complain about having to go to a screening mammogram, I just gently remind them that I want them to be around for a long time.

I also tell them that from experience, those biopsies, surgery and radiation treatments were a lot worse.

Go get your mammogram. It’s really not that bad. Honest.

You don’t want to deal with the alternative.

• Joan Oliver is the former Northwest Herald assistant news editor. She has been associated with the Northwest Herald since 1990. She can be reached at jolivercolumn@gmail.com.