The NHS are amazing.
Between the ages of 50-53, the UK's National Health Service, invite all women for a mammogram or breast screening. Early detection of breast cancer, which now affects 1 in 7 women can be life-saving.
I was invited for my first screening earlier this week. The appointment pinged up as a text message, timed for 12;12pm precisely, at the local Finchley Memorial hospital, to which I had never been.
The new tenants had requested the removal of the double bed, and the Recycling Centre (previously known as 'the dump'), being near to the hospital, my friend Claire had kindly offered to kill two birds with one stone, take the bed and drop me off.
I spent the evening before my appointment minimising the bed with a tiny D saw.
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We loaded the car and had the satisfying job of chucking the pieces of broken wood into a large skip at the site. Then Claire dropped my at the hospital. It was barely 11am, so I was super early. Hmmm what to do. I found the correct area for mammograms, a small 'women-only' waiting area, contained three middle-aged ladies, no makeup, sensible shoes. Do I look that age too? I thought. I managed to speak to someone and said:
'I'm crazy early, should I wait, or go away and come back again?'
The nurse found my name, a few pages on, and told me to take a seat. One by one the ladies disappeared into the X-ray room. The red light above the door flashed on, four times, each time for 4 seconds, the ladies emerged and left. Within ten minutes I was in the X-ray room with my top off!
One disrobes the top half only. the X-ray machine has a shelf that moves up and down, you stand in from of it and the radiographer, wearing plastic gloves, manoeuvres one breast onto the shelf, then winches down a sort of clamp onto the top of your breast, so that it is sandwiched between two sheets of thick plastic. Your face is pressed sideways up against a flat clear screen. Don't breathe. 4 seconds. Next breast. Then side boobage. Slightly painful, as your boob is clamped, many apologies from the radiographer. And all done.
I was out and on a gardening job by 12.12pm!
The results take a couple of weeks.
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