I had cancer in 09. It was a palpable lump that was invasive ductal carcinoma. I felt it. My doctor felt it. The mammogram operator felt it. But no matter what she did, she couldn't get the mammogram to see it. It was biopsied with an ultrasound guided needle biopsy, and ultimately an MRI was performed in which a second lesion was found that was not detected by the mammogram either, nor by our fingers.

So all of that started my mistrust of the mammogram.

Then I learned more and more about the cycle of Komen Foundation getting donations to "raise awareness" (i.e., not fund research or help pay for treatment for uninsured women or under-served communities), and the "awareness" being raised was specifically to have mammograms, and the more mammograms that are performed the more DCIS is discovered, which is by definition always stage 0 and which some people would say is not correctly identified as cancer, but which is only detectable by mammogram. So the more mammograms that are performed, the more DCIS is found that would not otherwise be diagnosed and the more women are identified as "cancer survivors." And you bet, they had surgery and radiation and dog knows what in order to cure the DCIS. But they also had fear and heartbreak and anxiety and relationship pressure and so on and so forth.

But that creates a statistic that makes mammograms look effective. Those women would not have died from DCIS anyway, and the women who did not have mammograms but did get breast cancer and die of it were all other types of cancer. So of course the mammograms look like they're doing something essential, when in fact they may be much less valuable than Komen Foundation wants you to believe. Because if you believe that they're valuable, then you too will want to "raise awareness" and you will donate to the Komen Foundation. And your money will go to fund more fundraising efforts or, in other words, to pay their salaries.

Let me donate to the American Cancer Society or something - anything - other than that organization. Ugh.

And I still get my mammograms because I am the world's most compliant patient but I never expect them to be a reasonable diagnostic tool.


~ ~ ~
All meetings end in separation
All acquisition ends in dispersion
All life ends in death
- The Buddha

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='_'=

Every hundred years, all new people