A Special Machine

A Special Machine

Okay, so the requests were to post more often. I warned this might result in me writing about the more mundane aspects of life. So here it goes. At certain stages in our aging, a doctor looks at you and says, you need to have this test—for girls after puberty it’s the foot in stirrups dreaded GYN visit, for men of a certain age, it the “cough and turn your head” exam and at 40 it’s the base mammogram experience. Now I’d had one of these before, like 6-7 years ago. I was drinking too much caffeine and it had deleterious side effects. I simply switched to decaf. I remember the test, it didn’t feel good but it was nothing that would cause me to run to my bedroom crying rivers of tears and clutching at my chest vowing never to come out again! . . .well, that is until I had my mammogram experience in New York City! If they say the Left Coast is too soft and the Right Coast is too tough, based solely on my mammogram experiences, I must now agree.

Visit 1. I leave work mid-afternoon, travel uptown to NY Presbyterian Hospital’s Female Imaging Center. I fill out paperwork and wait. Eventually I am escorted by a lovely blonde, 50ish eastern European woman into a room to take off my sweater, blouse and terribly expensive but essential brassiere. (It’s expensive because of the engineering required.) I wait. Eventually I am escorted into the machine room, and with dignity stand there in my slacks-topless. The woman, I don’t know her name, Helga works for this story, looks at the machine and then turned a steady but politely confused gaze at my chest. She turned again to the machine and back to my chest. This happened at least 3 times.

With a strong accent she begins. “Uh, I couldn’t tell, before, your clothes, they disguised or I couldn’t see or tell.—“ I’m wondering what? She continues in a halting fashion. “You see, this machine, I mean, you are a BIG girl!” I flush crimson. “This machine is for medium to small breasts, it won’t work, you need a special machine—“ What was she saying!? I'd had one before and I was the same size then or was I? My weight fluctuates between this and that. . maybe I was that then .. ?

I swallow the heat of embarrassment and the lump in my throat, I croak. “You mean I came all the way up here, took off my bra and I’m too big for the machine?!” She nodded, apologized then said their other machine might’ve been able to “handle” me but it was broken.

Listen, I come from a bosomy line of women but really, I’m too big for the mammogram machine? I see women way bigger than myself everywhere, where do women like us go?! Helga escorts me back to reception, the two women at the counter look at us perplexed. I retort as I waive a hand across my chest. “I guess I have too much going on here, I need the ‘special machine’.”

Visit 2. A month later, I am at a Cornell-Weill location on 63^rd and York. Before I even begin undressing, I open my cardigan and ask the technician, “Listen the other place said I was too big, I’m a D cup, is this gonna be a problem cuz I aint’ taking off all my clothes for nothing again.” She laughed and said it must’ve been an old machine. There would be no problem. LIAR!

I did as before, entering a little room for disrobing, left purse, upper body clothes, and then went into a shiny, clean room with 2 technicians. Everything looked brand spankin’ new. One technician stood by the machine and the other began exerting torture against my body unlike I’ve ever read or heard about! Torquemada hell!

Every woman knows they try to take a thing shaped somewhat like a ball attached to our chests and try to make it flat like a Frisbee between two plates of astoundingly cold metal or plastic. I knew that was coming but—suddenly, hey why are you tugging on it?! Now, a backstory.

When I was very young, not even 11, I saw a woman in my family who’d had 3 kids. She was built like I am now but she lived through the “burn your bra” era and had the kids, so things had a southern direction—very southern like the topless women in National Geographic we all stared at when we were kids. I did not want to look like that! I asked my Mom how I could ensure that didn’t happen. I got advice to always wear my bra and do pushups; don’t breastfeed too I think was in there. I followed this advice. I wore my bra ALL THE TIME even to bed until a group of girls in college confronted me, a staged intervention basically, and made me swear not to wear it to bed anymore, I could give myself breast cancer they all said. I wonder if that was at all true? OK, no.

So here I am 40 and things have matured in that arena as I’d hoped as a twit of 11. Then I get to the NYC mammogram center where smashing my flesh isn’t enough, the woman technician starts tugging and pulling on it to make it LONGER flatter?! Nooooooooooo!!!!!!! One done, then the 2nd and oh. . wait, we need to redo the first one! I teared up, 'oh okay' and trudged back to the machine.

So it was a torturous experience basically, one every woman of a certain age knows. I've long contended that if men menstruated there'd be a device invented to deal with it on Day 1, some sort of vacuum device. If man rather than turning their head and coughing, had to have a vital organ smashed between plates. .well you get my logic. The Horror! And this has to happen what annually?! At least I have a decade to wait until I get to have the ultimate experience that Dave Barry chronicled, the colonoscopy (I try to smile).

Link to Dave Barry's story:

http://www.miamiherald.com/418/story/427603.html