Keeping Abreast of Things

Usually it’s a man’s mind that is preoccupied with the female form. But today it’s my turn.

See, my mum’s beaten breast cancer twice. For various reasons I’m also in a high risk group and it’s almost time to see the Oncologist again. Yay me.

And now I hear that the lady doctor who diagnosed and treated herself while stationed at the South Pole 10 years ago, has finally succumbed to the dreaded disease.

For those not familiar with the story, Dr Jerri Nielsen was the medic stationed at Antarctica in 1999 when she discovered a suspicious lump. That was in June, but the serious weather down there meant she couldn’t be flown out for treatment for at least 4 months. So she taught staff on site how to do a fine needle biopsy (using raw chicken meat for practice!) and then gave herself chemotherapy after the drugs were dropped in by parachute.

But she died recently after the cancer came back and spread. She was only 57.

Such a shame. The world needs more women like this- not less!

It got me thinking about my mum and her doubly brave battle against this insidious illness as the date looms for me to have my annual screening. Yeah, due to a family history of the disease, and my own scare a few years back, we attempt to flatten my breasts into pancakes once every 12 months.

Now, anyone who has ever enjoyed the experience will be feeling my pain right about now. And for those who haven’t, let me educate you a little. It kinda resembles some medieval torture device, and it has to have been thought up by a man (can you imagine a similar contraption being used to check for testicular cancer?! I rest my case).

You go into a room with a complete stranger, strip to the waist, and have said stranger (often with cold hands) put one of your breasts onto a cold metal plate, lower a cold plastic plate onto it, tighten the vice, then send radiation through your precious private possession. Then repeat the process with the other boob.

For added enjoyment, they squash ‘em sideways too.

Oh and for safety reasons, the radiologist gets to retreat into a little booth while they take the images. Bit hard for you to do when you’re attached to the region receiving the rays.

Oddly enough, I always find it easy to comply with the “hold your breath” request- I’m simply too darn scared to move lest the machine rips my bits right off! I’m already standing on my tippy toes to reach the plate (shortass that I am), and leaning back so my girls can have all the limelight, so what’s a little lack of oxygen in the name of science?

Usually the entire process takes just a couple of minutes, and thankfully your bosoms are squeezed in this man-made machine for about 30 seconds. Oh it all works well in theory. In practice it can be quite different.

There has been much debate about who hurts most- the flat or full chested ladies. I’m in the latter category and I can tell you, it certainly doesn’t tickle! Because I am so generously endowed up top, instead of the few seconds it usually takes to scan the mamms, the poor old machine whirs for anything up to a minute trying to get a decent image of what’s inside. Even the radiologist apologises every time we have to do this, explaining that I’m so dense (in the boobie sense) that the x-rays are having trouble getting through! Again, yay me.

To add insult to injury (and believe me, there can be injury!) I then get to go into another room with another stranger who squirts freezing cold gel all over my girls, and proceeds to map out the mammaries much like a clock, checking for anything the mammogram might miss.

If I’m lucky, the sonographer will take pity on me and give me a heads-up whether there’s anything to worry about this time round. Or else I wait another week or so before I see the oncologist (who thankfully warms his hands before he begins the examination) who will brief me about my bosoms.

So far so good, and I’ve only had to have a needle stuck in the one time (trust me, that’s a whole different ball game of fun!) and I can go back to keeping my dignity for another year.

Having lost one school friend already to breast cancer, and others who’ve come close, I am truly grateful that I only have to do this once a year. I’m one of the lucky ones.

So before I go make a boob of myself yet again, I’m going to prepare for the procedure using the techniques proposed by an unknown author some years back:

Exercise 1
Open your refrigerator door and insert one breast in the door. Have one of your strongest friends slam the door shut and lean on it for good measure. Hold that position for 5 seconds. Repeat with other breast.

Exercise 2
Visit your garage at 3am when the temperature of the cement floor is just perfect. Remove your clothes and lie comfortably on the floor with one breast wedged under the rear tire of the car. Ask a friend to slowly back up the car until your breast is sufficiently flattened and chilled. Turn over and repeat for the other breast.

Exercise 3
Freeze two metal bookends overnight. Strip to the waist. Invite a stranger into the room. Press the bookends against one of your breasts. Ask the stranger to smash the bookends together as hard as they can. Set an appointment with the stranger to meet next year and do it again.

You are now properly prepared!

Jx
©2009

Boobie Trapped

(NOTE: The conference has been and gone, but I'm posting this from another blog of mine, due to requests to repeat in a public arena. I have no shame, apparently.)

I’ve got to go to Melbourne next week for a conference.

Now, I haven’t been in any kind of corporate clothing for years, and that was always part of the appeal of moving from the Copy and Sales department to being on-air in radio: no one really gets to see what you look like. You could be slopping into the studio in your slippers, but sound like a million dollars and that’s the way the listeners picture you (for some reason people always think I'm blonde, too…not sure how to take that, hmmmm)!

Anyway, thanks to a quirk of Mother Nature when I became a mother, most of my “suit” stuff no longer fits me. Aside from the little jelly belly that haunts a lot of us ladies even after we get rid of ‘the bump’, I‘m a far cry from the President of the Itty Bitty Titty Committee that I used to be at school, that’s for sure. Oh yes, I couldn’t be one of those early developers and get the goods when we were trying to attract the boys in high school, could I. Oh no, I had to be a late bloomer didn’t I?

And bloom I did.

My girls darn near require their own postcode these days!

Within minutes it seemed of finally falling pregnant with my firstborn, I went from a respectable and sorely missed C (for Cute/Compact) cup, to DD (a Desirable Double), to an F (Far out), through G (Good God), up to H (Holy Hell), and into a nappy bra once the milk kicked in. Do you know what I mean by that? Two cloth nappies folded into triangles then pinned together as a halter top in an effort to contain the massive milk-making machines. (And you will never see those photos, I can assure you.)

Not only did I set a new record in the maternity wing at our local hospital, I broke it with my next bub!

Through the miracle of weight loss one gets from breastfeeding, I soon shrunk back to a tidy little size 10-12 (ok, I’ll be honest, so it’s more like 12-14 these days). Except for the girls- still an F cup. Friends and family who said that you lose your boobs when you stop feeding, lied to me big time.

How hard is it, I ask, to find a decent dress or matching pieces to fit that sort of figure, that’s not too tight up top or too baggy at bottom?? Very. Bloody. Hard.

After a few years of looking longingly at my lovely clothes in my cupboard, I bit the bullet and gave them all away. Which left me with a fairly unexciting selection of vee neck tees (to draw the eyes upwards and away from the monster cleavage, dontcha know), oversized baseball tops (an all-out camouflage campaign), and just a couple of nice pairs of pants and skirts (bor-ing).

So when my boss says we’re off to Melbourne for a conference, it occurred to me that I needed to seriously rethink and rework my wardrobe. (Sheesh, it’s the “Style Capital of Australia”, for crying out loud! Could we not have held it somewhere called ‘Boganville’ instead?)

I take one of my BFFs with me to help me shop.

Here we pause and I make a comment about the true nature of our friendship, as a couple of days ago I again tried on the two dresses I bought with her approval. One has a nice vee front…….that darn near dips to my belly button thank you very much! The other has a 3 inch wide belt that cinches just below the boosies, and causes me to have flashbacks to the aforementioned nappy bra. *shudder*

Like anyone would pay attention to what I was teaching in the Master Class if I wore that one!!!

What was I thinking picking these dresses?

What was she thinking to let me get them??

So it’s back to the drawing board with just 2 days now to locate the perfect corporate outfit on an itty bitty budget (yes, pity my monetary assets aren't as large as my physical assets). And now I am hyperconscious of my curvaceous booty. To the point where I am positive that if the local TV news crew were out filming generic images of the crowds for a story on say, obesity, getting the sort of shots where they zoom in on the fat butts or rounded tums or generous chests going by…well, that little red light would so be blinking in my direction for sure.

I mean, when I returned the affronting belted number, the nice sales lady insisted I try on another style- also with a belt! Needless to say, even she couldn’t contain her shock, and was ever-so-helpful in refunding my money, ever-so-quickly too.

So now, with about 48 hours remaining, it’s come down to this: if I fail in my mission to camo the mammo’s, I can only hope that my Workshop is sufficiently brilliant to keep the group’s attention on the topic and not on my top.

On the other hand, if my Power Point Presentation is pathetic, at least there’ll be two points that participants will remember!

Jx
©2009