Carole's mammogram: update
Apr. 10th, 2011 04:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jayfurrI thank the many, many people who shared their point of view on whether or not I should seek to go along and watch and/or keep my wife company during her first-ever mammogram. I was open to the idea but wondered if it would be seen as weird or inconvenient by the staff of the clinic... and some people said "Heck no, my husband always comes along on mine" while others said "Um, the waiting area is women-only. We're in little gowns and all that."
It turns out that the clinic where Carole's going for her mammogram is one of the latter kind. The waiting area is women-only and at best I could wait in the outer waiting room, the general radiology waiting area, I guess. Interestingly, my not being welcome has nothing to do with them not wanting extra people around the x-ray equipment proper, as some people told me would be the case. My wife, as it turns out, is more than welcome to bring a female friend right into the mammogram room with her -- but not a male. It's hospital policy.
And then, as fate would have it, the whole thing became moot when a three-day class starting the day before the scheduled mammogram date suddenly started getting signups... and I'm the only instructor who teaches said class, so I guess I'm locked in now.
In any case, I wish Carole well with her mammogram. She has no history of breast cancer in her family bloodline, but as we all know, that's not a 100% guarantee that she'll never get it either. We just hope she won't... and if she does, of course, we want to detect it early. Now that she's 40, depending on who you talk to, she needs a yearly mammogram. I wonder if there's an Hallmark or American Greetings card to send someone on the occasion of her very first.
It turns out that the clinic where Carole's going for her mammogram is one of the latter kind. The waiting area is women-only and at best I could wait in the outer waiting room, the general radiology waiting area, I guess. Interestingly, my not being welcome has nothing to do with them not wanting extra people around the x-ray equipment proper, as some people told me would be the case. My wife, as it turns out, is more than welcome to bring a female friend right into the mammogram room with her -- but not a male. It's hospital policy.
And then, as fate would have it, the whole thing became moot when a three-day class starting the day before the scheduled mammogram date suddenly started getting signups... and I'm the only instructor who teaches said class, so I guess I'm locked in now.
In any case, I wish Carole well with her mammogram. She has no history of breast cancer in her family bloodline, but as we all know, that's not a 100% guarantee that she'll never get it either. We just hope she won't... and if she does, of course, we want to detect it early. Now that she's 40, depending on who you talk to, she needs a yearly mammogram. I wonder if there's an Hallmark or American Greetings card to send someone on the occasion of her very first.
