A big sigh of relief....

So, do you remember I had my very first mammogram last week, because my Dr wanted to get my baseline exam in before my health insurance lapsed the end of January? Well Being the first one for me, I wasn't quite sure what to expect and of course after hearing all of the horror stories and all of the jokes that people make about them, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. But I must say it was nothing like I had expected, it was not a long procedure nor was it all painful. At the most you could say it was a little uncomfortable. Alot easier than a pap smear, if you want to compare the 2 necessary evils that women must do to protect their good health. Now I will say that I had a little bit of a scare with my Mammo though, 2 days ago I got a phone call saying they needed me to come in for additional pictures as they had seen some densities on both sides and they needed to take additional pics to verify that it was just fibrous tissues or fatty tissues and not something else. They also said they had scheduled an ultrasound for just in case the next round of pics still didn't clarify what they were seeing. OK that's a little scary, especially since this was my first mammo and I wasn't expecting this. Apparently though this is very common and alot of baseline mammos get called back in for additional pics. They don't have any pics from the previous year to compare to and sometimes the first pics just aren't clear enough. So I was told not to panic and not to assume the worst but my mind started racing anyway. AND it didn't help that my better half got mad at me for worrying about this. In talking to a friend yesterday she said she has known several women who had to go back in, for call back mammos, due to nodule densities and they almost always are nothing and she said all of these women had gotten scared and anxious too. She seems to think men just arent as sensitive to these issues as they should be and that its just their way of avoiding having to think about something being wrong with the person they love. Maybe, but a hug sure would have been nice. All women when we go to get our yearly pap smears and mammos want to hear the words everything looks good we will see you in a year, you never want to hear the words, we saw something that we need to do additional tests on. That's just scary! I am happy to say that after a trip to the hospital, very early this morning and several digital xrays, they were able to determine that I indeed just have fibrous tissues and very very very dense breasts and dense breasts/fibrous tissues are not a precursor for cancer. Thank goodness!! I was told this morning though that since I have such dense breasts I should only have digital mammos from now on. The basic xray mammo that I had last week just isn't capable of cutting thru all of my dense tissues. But there was no way to know that when I had the mammo last week since it was just my first one. For alot of women the basic xray mammo works just fine but for women like me they recommend only digital pics. They showed me the difference from last weeks xrays compared to today's digital pics and it was a huge difference in the picture quality! I could totally see why they had wanted to take additional pics.

Now for all of you women out there who havent had your baseline mammo and or have been putting it off because you are worried or scared. DONT BE! Its a very simple procedure and the few minutes of discomfort are well worth the peace of mind of knowing that you are in good health!!!! Even a few scary days waiting for the next batch of pics to be taken is still worth the worry of finding out for sure that there is absolutely nothing wrong!

So maybe I can actually get some sleep tonight. I'm exhausted today. Today, I definitely found a flower after wading thru several days of thorns!!!