Guess what time it was last week?

First mammogram time!

Frankly, I was annoyed more than anything; I’m in zero cancer risk groups, and I have a longstanding theory – which there’s quite a lot of evidence behind by now – that while I am enormously susceptible to diseases that make you WISH you were dead, I will never get one that stands a chance of actually killing me. This is not hubris but wistfulness, if you’ve read correctly.

So if I come back here and tell you the test was positive, you can feel free to laugh at me. I realize it will seem inappropriate, but do it anyway. I’ll have earned it.

I had heard that it was going to hurt, a lot. It probably did, actually, but not nearly as much as I thought. Or it WOULDN’T HAVE…

For the uninitiated, they basically smash your boobs flat between two flat plates, from several angles, and take a picture. While things were being “positioned” for the shot from the side, I noticed but did not comment on one of those plates poking into my collarbone.

Women who are one or more years younger than I: If you notice? Comment on. If you don’t, see, you end up with one of your bones being smashed between two big heavy things with a crapload of pressure behind them. This sucks.

But not QUITE as much as my Extremely Meek Childhood Self making an unwelcome reappearance and reacting as such: “Oh, that hurts. Well, it’ll only be another second or two; I don’t think the bone will break. I just won’t say anything.”

Oh, Extremely Meek Childhood Self. You suck SO HARD. Although I suppose it would have been an amusing conversation piece, to come out of a routine medical test in a cast. Ha ha ha.

The other thing I noticed, which is quite minor compared to the whole bone-crushing potential, is that it was the weirdest and most awkward use of hospital gowns ever. You put it on tied in the front (which in this particular model didn’t, you know, work) and then do all this elaborate removing and folding and tucking to expose the current patient. Then you cover that side up and do the whole routine over again.

OK.

Nobody has ever accused me of being an exhibitionist.

But honestly, if you’ve already got one bosom out in the open air, is it really more traumatic to have ‘em both on temporary display? My vote: No. Perhaps you could fill out a little card about whether you prefer increased exposure to uncomfortable contortion?

I hope we have all learned something today. I know I probably haven’t.