Tag Archive for: mammography

Tales from Waiting Room Laughing at Cancer

Tales from the Waiting Room – Laughing at Cancer

Tales from Waiting Room Laughing at CancerFirst one mammogram, then another mammogram plus ultrasound, then biopsies. That’s how I spent the last two weeks of May. I got to know the radiology office better than I’d ever wanted to. On June 1st, I received my diagnosis of breast cancer. I needed an MRI to look for more tumors but couldn’t schedule it until my insurance company authorized it.

Once United Healthcare was sufficiently convinced that a malignancy justified further diagnostic testing, I had the MRI done on June 6th. Then I got a call that I needed a second MRI. The first had “lit up” as if there were multiple growths on both sides but they were pretty confident this was due to hormones, and the images would be “quieter” the following week. I hoped so since my mother had a bilateral mastectomy five years ago for multiple tumors.

On June 12th, I found myself once again in the same waiting room. As before it was nearly full of people, mostly women, in some stage of fear, worry or, worst of all, resignation. Some were drinking contrast dye from a cooler marked DO NOT DRINK. From their involuntary cries of disgust, I gleaned it might be the same barium I drank for a G.I. test 18 years ago. It tasted like moldy drywall. This begs the question: with all the advancements in technology, including the digitally assisted mammography that caught my cancer early, why can’t someone make a contrast solution that tastes better?

While I waited to have the test that would tell me if I had a little cancer or a lot, a news program playing on the wall-mounted TV caught my eye. Someone had shot a guy who was writing a book called Kindness in America. Was this a joke? The report continued: he was hitchhiking across the U.S. gathering stories for his memoir about the kindness of Americans when a drunk man in Montana rolled down the window of his truck and shot him. For no reason.

I cracked up. In my defense, the story also stated that the guy had only been hit in the arm and was okay.  I reasoned that getting shot would help him get a book deal. He’d need to find a way to turn it into a positive experience. He had certainly cheered me up in a rather grim setting.

Update: It turns out that the guy shot himself to get publicity. Perhaps he was affording emergency room staff the opportunity to display kindness by treating him?

Back on planet Waiting Room, I hear my name called. The nurse recognizes me and helps me with the sticky safe lock in the changing room; the phlebotomist remembers which vein she stuck the needle in for the contrast-dye IV catheter (no taste, yay!); and the doctor remembers the classic rock radio station (104.3) I favor from last time.

I ask him if people freak out about MRIs because of the TV show House. He sighs. “All the time,” he says. He’d seen an episode once where green sparks were flying out and had to stop watching because it was so inaccurate. He says it’s too bad because he hears it’s a good show. I tell him the show’s over and people were always having seizures during MRIs, and someone vomited blood in almost every episode, so maybe he hasn’t missed much. He puts the headphones on me, and as the bed rolls me inside, the radio plays Pink Floyd’s Welcome to the Machine. Perfect.

Related posts:
I’m Radioactive – Laughing at Cancer
6 Things You Should Never Tell a Cancer Patient

Copyright Notice 2018 Magick Sandwich

breast versus penis word game

I See Your Breast and Raise You a Penis: A Word Game

breast versus penis word gameToday, the United States Preventive Services Task Force released its recommendation that women begin routine breast cancer screening at age 50, instead of 40. It has based this on the modest benefit of mammograms versus the harm of overtreatment.

First, let me explain that the study’s idea of modest benefit is a fifteen percent reduction in breast cancer deaths. That number sounds kind of good to me. If I were one of those women, I’d be one hundred percent happy with that.*

And the harm of overtreatment? Cancers might be removed that would have grown too slowly to kill the women in which they are detected. As you can imagine, this is a real drag for insurance companies who have to pay for the procedures when they would be happier to spin the Wheel of Fortune and bet their customers will die of natural causes. And since insurance companies are for-profit organizations, that’s exactly what they do when insuring us.

The other egregious harm the task force cites? Can mammography kill us, as cancer can? No, but unnecessary tests can cause anxiety. Isn’t it so much better for us just not to worry our pretty little heads about it? After all, only fifteen percent of our mothers, sisters, and daughters will be saved. What a tough choice.

According to one statistician, although this will save billions of dollars in health costs, “the money was buying something of net negative value. This decision is a no-brainer. The economy benefits, but women are the major beneficiaries.” I’m no number cruncher, but when did a fifteen percent reduction in mortality have a negative value?

So, what I’d like to do is play a little word game with a New York Times article published on this subject. Wherever there’s a mention of women and breast cancer, I’m going to substitute something else. See if you can tell where:

Overall, the report says, the modest benefit of the exam — reducing the dick cancer death rate by 15 percent — must be weighed against the harms. And those harms loom larger for men in their 40s, who are 60 percent more likely to experience them than men 50 and older but are less likely to have their balls fall off, skewing the risk-benefit equation. The task force concluded that one death by cock rot is prevented for every 1,904 men age 40 to 49 who are screened for 10 years, compared with one prick withering for every 1,339 men age 50 to 74, and one fatal phallus for every 377 men age 60 to 69.

But the new report conflicts with advice from groups like the American Cancer Society and the American College of Radiology. They are staying with their guidelines advising annual knob screening starting at age 40.

The cancer society agreed that man-o-grams had risks as well as benefits but, he said, the society’s experts had looked at “‘virtually all” the task force and additional data and concluded that the benefits of annual exams starting at age 40 outweighed the risks of unnecessary dickectomy.

Private insurers are required by law in every state except Utah to pay for a chubby checker for men in their 40s.

But the new guidelines are expected to alter the grading system for health plans, which are used as a marketing tool. The message for most men is to forgo ensuring their johnsons aren’t killing them if they are in their 40s. In fact, even though exams are of greater benefit to older men, they still prevent only a small fraction of dick cancer deaths.

Researchers worry the new report will be interpreted as a political effort by the Obama administration to save money on health care costs.

Of course, Dr. Dingle Berry noted, if the new guidelines are followed, billions of dollars will be saved.

“But the money was buying something of net negative value,” he said. “This decision is a no-brainer. The economy benefits, but men are the major beneficiaries.”

Do you doubt that if the above were true, there would be a million men brandishing pitchforks and torches marching on Washington right now? You know the answer as well as I do. I’m just being a tease.

P.S. On a serious note, check out this study on digital mammography funded by the National Cancer Institute and published in 2005. Digital mammography is much more accurate in detecting breast cancer in women under 50 and in older women with dense breast tissue than traditional mammography. It saved my mother’s life. I may need it to save mine someday. But even at high risk, my insurance will not cover the computer-assisted exam. The superior technology exists, right now, to save more women. Why isn’t it recommended? Because it’s a lot more expensive than telling us not to worry or to wait to have the inferior test. Statistically speaking, we’re not worth it.

*Update 2018: As it turns out, I was one of those women. In June of 2012, at the age of 47, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was caught early because of a digital mammogram that showed enough detail for a radiologist to see a very small tumor. I’m lucky that my insurance covered the more sensitive test. If I’d had to wait until age 50 to get it, I could be dead now, and my little word game would just be a sad coda to my smart-alecky life. I’m happy it didn’t turn out that way.

Copyright Notice 2018 Magick Sandwich