Think Pink

It's that time of year again -- time for a mammogram. The technology has really improved -- digital cameras and no waiting around to see if they got a good picture -- plus the new machines don't have to squeeze so hard to get a good image. No more of that tit in a wringer stuff. I was in and out in less than twenty minutes -- time well spent when you consider how prevalent breast cancer is and how very curable it is with early detection.

There's no history of breast cancer in my family, but I trot along every year for my mammogram, just as I do for my pap smear and ovarian ultrasound (there is a history there, as my mother died of ovarian cancer). And now that I'm in my sixties, there's the colonoscopy every few years. All of these are tedious in their way but how lucky we are to have these early detection systems. Expensive, for sure, but late stage cancer's even more so.

And the really great thing, for me at least, is that, having had the mammogram or pap smear or whichever, now I feel like I've done what I can do -- and for the rest of the year, I pretty put these particular worries out of my mind.

Note: Spell check suggests substituting the words cloudscape or kaleidoscope for colonoscopy. Wouldn't that be nice?