OH MAMMY

I was cleaning out my bill/letter sorter on my desk this week.  It's the place I put bills that need to be paid, paperwork in process, 3 blank legal notepads, an envelope of coupons that sometimes expire before I use them, miscellaneous email addresses written on sticky notes, health insurance explanation of benefits forms, random papers that need me to call about something, remind me to do something or set an appointment for something.  I found one of the latter in the mix this week.  It was a mammogram brochure that my gynecologist gave me this summer while at my yearly appointment.  It's the same one she gave me last summer.  The one with the phone number for the mammogram center listed and the paragraph circled that read, "It is recommended that women 40 and over get mammograms yearly."   I smiled as I read the brochure.  Feeling extremely free, I threw it in the trash can.  One less paper clogging the bill sorter I thought.  I remembered I had done the exact same thing last year - kept the brochure designed to make you set your mammogram appointment for a few months and then threw it away.  It's not that I'm scared.  I've had mammograms before.  They are what they are, a necessary part of an over 40ish woman's life.  Nor am I intimidated by a woman named Verna in her mid 50's handling my breasts like the bean bags used in the game Corn Hole or like a raw hamburger patty being prepared for the grill.  "Parts are parts", as my friend, a former EMS worker, says about body parts that need discretion.  Texting back and forth several days ago with my friend Big D, she filled me on the end to her work day, "Oh yeah baby, nothing like getting yer boobs smashed....mammogram!"  Being abundantly full of cleavage I asked her, "Did you lose a cup size?"  Her comeback to my cleavage lack, breast deficit, 4 lane-highway of a chest was, "How the hell do they get your wee mounds photographed?"  I slung back acerbically, "They usually crack a rib:)"  Since I am not well endowed, it is rather difficult and painful to go through a mammogram.  Cracking a rib for a thin, small chested woman isn't too far off.   Mostly what I don't like about mammograms is what you cannot do in preparation to go to your yearly boob smashing appointment.  You cannot wear deodorant or perfume.  Why, I'm not totally sure.  Possibly it messes up the machines, gives the tech a headache from all the scents.  I don't know.  To me it would make sense to let the women wear deodorant and perfume as the tech is basically reaching her bare hand partly up your underarm to find every last ounce of breast tissue that is hiding there!  Like a spatula scraping the last bit of dough from a bowl, the tech kneads and flops the found tissue further under the metal plates.   I am a deodorantaholic and never like to leave home without my signature 6 swipes under each arm or without my 2 sprays of perfume - neck and chest.  Not only do I have to subject my small and shrinkie dink breasts to being sandwiched between two metal plates till flesh breaks open or ribs begin to crack, but I have to endure that nerve racking procedure without the aid of my Degree deodorant.  I really have never longed for cleavage or large breasts.  Who I am I love.  Only for one day would I like to be bustie, like my friend Big D.  On Oh Mammy Day!