For a little background: save your ta tas

Sorry for the upcoming rant and abuse of exclamation points but here goes! I CANNOT, absolutely cannot believe what the US Preventive Services Task Force released in their updated guideline for breast cancer screening last night. I absolutely just loooovvvee how they say it can be at the woman’s discretion if she wants to get a mammogram in her 40s. Puhlease, people!!! Do you know what this means? Do you?! What it means is that this will give these stupid insurance companies (and the government) even more reason to perhaps not cover screening mammograms until you are 50! Spare me. As this is a government task force is this a way for them to begin to “save some moula” for their health care reform????

And what about those women in their 40s (and we all know someone…at least one person) with breast cancer? Well, I guess they’d be dead and long gone or have metastases to their bones by the time they get their mammogram when they are 50! And let me tell you…it is REAL fun watching someone you care about die of bone mets from cancer!!!!

Heck, I’ve always been frustrated about how to find breast cancer in women my own age. It is near impossible to detect in women in their 30s. Our tissue is so dense. Here I thought that maybe~just maybe, someday a recommendation would come out about periodic ultrasounds for breast cancer screening in women in their 30s. But….noooo, instead we are going to cut back on our screening attempts????

AND, they have the nerve to say there is NO value to women doing their own breast exams. Again, I tell you…spare me!!! Sure, a woman isn’t going to find EVERY cancer but I can’t tell you how proud I am when a younger woman comes in and is concerned about a “lump” because I know this means she was listening to me when I did her exam. And, they are even questioning whether there is any value in us doing exams on our patients. Gag!!!

The only small hope to hang on to is that the American Cancer Society is going against this as of now…I’ll be interested to see what happens in the days to come. For now, I’ll continue to examine my patient’s ta tas and encourage them to do the same.