Thank You Ma'am, for the Mammogram

I turned 40 this year. You know what that means, ladies. Time for your first mammogram! Just went and got mine done. Fascinating. The best part was in the waiting room. In the first waiting room, they called two of us up at the same time. I said, "Is this a two for one special?" Ha ha.

We changed into robes and went to sit in a different waiting room. It was like a private woman's club because we were all wearing the same thing. I started talking to two older women. The one across from me made a positive comment about my tattoos, and the one next to me snorted in disgust. "Agh!" She said. I said, "You don't like them." "Agh!" she snorted again, "Not at all! My granddaughter, she has a...thing in her nose, I don't like these things at all!" She had a Russian accent. She said she came from Russia.

The older woman across from us said that she liked them, they were colorful. She and I kept talking. We talked about tattoos, how it was in the old days when you couldn't even afford to go to the doctor, vaccines (she asked me, "Do they give vaccines anymore?"), and TV. I learned she was 87 years old. I said, "87! God love ya!" She laughed and said she was starting to lose it a little, though, in the past six months. She couldn't remember the name of the guy who had won American Idol. She thinks that's losing it. Wow. She has her own room in her daughter's house. On the 3rd floor. She walks up all the stairs, no problem.

This woman was amazing. I wanted to have tea with her. She said she likes talking to people, she talks to everyone. I wished we could have talked longer. Eventually she left, and I watched Family Feud with the next woman who came in. The waiting room was a party and a half!

I got called in and had my boobs manipulated by a woman's hands and a machine. When was the last time I had this much action? And why don't women talk about this machine? It was the strangest procedure I have ever had, bypassing the time a nose camera went up my nostril.

Women close to 40, pay attention. You stand real close to the machine so the parts are in your face, and the technician puts your bare breast on a shelf, like it's not attached to you. You tilt your head to the side, and another plastic shelf squeezes your breast flat like a pancake. You stand in a very unnatural and uncomfortable position for a few seconds, and then she does the other breast. Four poses in all, unless she gets a fold, and then you have to have more done.

As the technician was adjusting my breast, I said to her, "I would love to see what kind of training class you had to take to learn this." She told me it was mostly on the job training. I asked her if she liked her job, and she said, "It's a job. Somebody has to do it!" and I told her I was glad it was her. She was nice. I was told I would get a letter in the mail and she'd see me next year. Hopefully the whole gang will be back.