NOTE: There be bewbs ahead! Maybe save this one for after work.
*****
I don't know about you, fellow anxiety warriors, but for me any new body pain
sends my brain sprinting towards Worse Case Scenario Valley. So of course when my left armpit and arm gave the slightest of aches the other week, it was
RED ALERT ALL HANDS ON PANIC.
You might recall I have Thoracic Outlet Syndrome: a pinched nerve in the
clavicle area that causes arm and hand numbness and pain. You might also
remember my left arm is worse than my right. After months of treatment the
numbness is mostly gone, but I still get occasional aches. So, logically, that
is the likely culprit.
Does my panicky lizard brain appreciate logic,
though?
Ooooof course not.
Adding to the freshly whipped panic smoothie was that we recently adjusted some of my
hormone meds, so for the first time in ages, my tracts of land kinda hurt. I
am not used to this. I do not like it.
I'd had a breast ultrasound
last year, but never an actual mammogram. Like a lot of you with upper
acreage, the idea of a mammogram scared the crap out of me. I'd heard the horror stories, and
even watched my mom get the squeeze when I was a teenager. Mom has an insanely high
pain tolerance, so she barely flinched, but seeing her boobs smashed that flat
was traumatizing, ok?
Noooo, second-hand flashbacks...
That said, pain and panic are powerful motivators, and lucky for me a
routine mammogram is one of the few medical things here in Orlando that
doesn't have a months-long wait. Our imaging clinic had a spot for me in two days, and not only that, they had me in, scanned, and out in under 20
minutes.
Better still, I am relieved and delighted to report IT
DIDN'T HURT, y'all. It really didn't! I was still waiting for the "real"
pressure to start when the tech said we were done with the first scan. We
did three compressions on each side (I assume because it was my first mammo) and
each felt like a firm hug between plastic plates, no more, even on my
already-tender poofs. I have a low pain tolerance, but I only felt a single
uncomfortable pinch during one pass, which I think was more the top plate snagging
too much chest skin than the actual squeeze.
Since then I've discovered the reason for my less painful experience may have
been the machine. My clinic uses a 3D mammography machine, something not every lab has yet. Our moms had the older 2D machines, and if
you remember a super smashy mammogram, it's possible that's what you had,
too.
Both 2D and 3D machines look similar, but the 3D ones move
in a half circle over you during the scan:
According to everything I'm seeing online these are superior to the 2D scans,
with more angles and better imaging, less compressions, and
fewer false-positives. They're also better for dense tissue, a plus since that runs in my family.
The older 2D machines are static, and do NOT
move during the scan. So if you don't remember the machine moving on its own,
then you had a 2D mammogram.
