Titty Torture

It’s that marvellous time of the year where my breasts get squeezed into pancakes you’d find at an IHOP.  My biennial mammogram. Sounds like candygram but not so sweet.

I arrive at my appointment wondering whether a guy would ever agree to get his family jewels squished between two acrylic square panels resembling s’mores. I know the answer would be a resounding ’no fu*king way.’  Not without medication, the rest of the day off and painkillers for any residual discomfort. Women, on the other hand, do this routinely, repeating the process every two years. Ticking it off their ‘to do list’ where it sits somewhere between grocery shopping and a hair appointment.

It’s an overcast fall morning as I meander into the registration line at the hospital, and once checked in given a wristband that screams this isn’t a concert. I want it off before it’s even put on. Once registered I am handed a colour coded map that a five-year-old would get with their kid’s meal at Chipotle. It’s a fake treasure map designed to direct me to my fate via yellow painted footsteps. I take a pass declining the opportunity of looking like a tourist navigating my way through the hospital when I spot two senior volunteers.  I inquire where the diagnostic imaging department is to which both women smile, point and cringe all at the same time. I thank them with a similar winced face. Two hundred steps later I arrive at a room with a pink sign.  How cliche I think.  A nurse walks in, announces my name and escorts me into another little room. She interviews me to determine whether I’m pregnant.  My face riddled with crows feet and wrinkles and a head full of white hair isn’t evidence enough to the contrary.  “Not in this dimension,” I reply.  She continues, “When was your last period?”  “I don’t know what I did yesterday,” I answer,  “so supplying an accurate date to a menstrual cycle I no longer have has eluded me.”  She is frustrated and inquires whether I recorded it.  “Nope. When I stopped menstruating, I didn’t mark it on my calendar.  I burned the calendar as a celebratory gesture to not have to record Charlie’s appearance any longer.” Charlie was the pet name for my menses handed down to me by the Catholic sisterhood. They believed in giving a guys name to something that they could blame and was a pain in the ass. At a time where most girls wore inflated sized sanitary napkins the size of a McNally road map in a sling no less.  With white absent for the duration of one’s cycle, was all Charlie’s fault.

The nurse tells me to change into a floral hospital gown that she hands me. It should be a gown, that would be fun. Instead, it’s Amish lingerie. As I slip out of my fashionable jeans, I discover I have my comfortable old lady underwear on. I return to the waiting room filled with women dressed like me. Suddenly my underwear feels pretty. I see the ratio shift with each woman who enters the room.  Some void of expression as though a guillotine is waiting for them while others mindlessly distract themselves randomly flipping through an old issue of People Magazine. This group of women is my sisterhood, and by the divinity of the Universe, we have been asked to gather on this autumn morning.

With my name called, for an instant I am nervous.  I walk into a room with a technician that looks like she scoops bubble gum ice cream at Baskin and Robbins.  Too young to be doing this, I’m convinced she’s an intern waiting for the senior technician.  The machine quietly hums as she directs me to align myself with this obnoxious apparatus. I realize this kid is the technician.

I disrobe and watch as she handles my twins like over-ripened mangos while wearing blue latex gloves squishing them mercilessly. My puppies, staring back at me confused and betrayed wondering why they’re being persecuted.  The exercise always the same.  How far can the flesh from the back of my ass stretch so my breasts can be ripped off of my chest like trees in a wild hurricane? I breathe in and hold my breath as I look away. I can’t bear that I am bringing such discomfort to the twins. I see that they have become play-doh.  No longer bouncing back as quickly as they once did, now assuming an unnatural shape.

My breasts and I want to lovingly surrender to a process that is for their greater good, but resistance ensues, with the discomfort and pain. My flesh shocked as it is being demanded to expand beyond its capacity. The skin on the back of my ass is screaming not wishing to get involved in the situation. I distract myself by thinking how great it would be if they could employ a butt lift into this examination.  But alas, they are not that advanced in their technology.

The words spoken by the technician are counter-intuitive to the situation.  “Relax and breathe,” she says. You get your sweater meat packaged between these two square dishes and then we can talk.  She is a young woman who has never had one of these images taken. I know because the more mature women who administer this test have an entirely different protocol and relax is not a word they use.

They start by apologizing for what they are about to do taking responsibility up front.  Secondly, the mature technician’s etiquette is rooted in humility and compassion.  Thirdly, a count is done so you know when it’s over.  Finally, they expedite the examination in a manner they would want for themselves. This diagnostic technician is committed to ensuring she captures the best imagery possible as though it will be the feature spread in Vanity Fair. Though I appreciate the intention, it’s the manner in which she undertakes it that is annoying and painful. She tugs, shoves, stretches, squishes and squeezes.  She is a novice not able to expedite this delicate procedure efficiently and with the least amount of distress.  Her actions are better suited to consuming gummy bears of which I am not but convinced are waiting in her purse. A litany of profanity runs through my head as a way to quietly rant and distract myself from the bizarre pain and pinching I have submitted to willingly.

She checks the images she has captured while I stand there, boobs exposed, feeling sexless.  She is taking my normal looking breasts, and transforming them from perky puppies into tetherball tits.  Sophia Loren would never agree to such torture with her sultry cleavage.

I query the technician. “With all the hi-tech equipment out there they can certainly come up with another solution to satisfy this mandate in a manner that is humane for women.” She agreed as she fiddled with the equipment sharing that she suspects it was a guy who designed the device. I realize she is also a rocket scientist. Of course, a man invented this contraption. She continues with the examination her entire lexicon built on two words, relax and breathe while I’m in the shape of a contortionist from Cirque du Soleil. At that moment I discover Mammogram is the technical term for ‘titty torture.’

The technician does a final check and tells me I can leave.  I quickly change and toss the sexless hospital dress into the hamper, fingers crossed that I won’t have to return for two more years.

I discovered that GE Healthcare is changing this process and is responsible for the innovative ‘Senographe Pristina.’ Designed by women from outside of Paris. It is a mammography system with features that help reduce pain with the breast screening experience. It has a wireless remote called the Pristina Dueta for women to determine how much compression they can handle.  The straight edges replaced with rounded ones, and the design no longer intimidating. Instead of a bar to grab onto when you scream, there are armrests so you can breathe instead. A woman’s sensibilities envelopes every aspect of its compassionate design.

A man would die if he had to do this even once but not us.  Women do it all the time. Walking through it and out the other end as they continue on their day. The moral of the story is our power is no illusion. It’s real, and we live it daily in so many different ways.  This exercise is a reminder of just how much of it we have.