Has anyone decided not to go for a routine mammogram?

[hattie43]

I'm curious to know . I have mine next week and will attend but last time was a nightmare as I was recalled and health anxiety went through the roof . Luckily no cancer . I was reading that about 30% of women don't attend Apparently mammograms don't pick up everything and aren't foolproof , but surely they are better than nothing .

@Rebel2 - I’m a severe asthmatic according to my records - I don’t remember to take my preventer/tablets for longer than 3/4 days at a time at most, and no longer even take my reliever with me. Not that I can even get a prescription from the nhs for them as I can’t get an asthma review and without that I can’t get a prescription - chicken and egg situation.

my asthma doesn’t bother me as much and a private prescription can be obtained instead so I keep some meds on hand should I have an attack and can treat at home just the same as they would in a surgery or have done in a hospital. - I’m also lucky in controlling it well as I know what sets it off, and just avoid those triggers, which works well,as those triggers are things that make me extremely uncomfortable anyhow and I no longer have a financial need to endure them simply to pay the bills. So far in five years I’ve been ok. and in 6 decades of life I’ve not had anything else require meds to ensure life continues. I have found it quite useful in not being able to get a dr appointment as that way you are guaranteed never to be diagnosed - and so the question of taking long term meds and non compliance won’t need to be broached.
I will have to die of something at some point, I have zero desire to live for ever or be uploaded to a computer a la Elon musk. It might be a heart attack, it might be cancer, equally I might get hit by a truck walking to the postbox and die. This thread does raise a question for me in how far removed we have become from the absolute fact that we all will have to die one day, and how frightened and non accepting of that fact people have become.

Quite. There was a comment further up about the medical profession treating women like children. Depressingly, on MN screening threads it is other women who are telling those who choose not to partake that they are stupid/childish/selfish, while the NHS is actually more factual in its advice.

Why don’t we trust mentally competent women in possession of the facts to weigh up the risks and come to a decision? Why do we think that a woman who chooses to turn down screening is wrong, either morally or in her reasoning?

There is something very infantilising in the sheer pressure brought to bear on women to do as they’re told and not question. There was even a post on here lamenting the focus of some posts on rights - you get the impression some posters would be keen on women being pressured to make the ‘right’ choice.

Women on here pointing out the risk of over treatment - which the NHS itself does! - are accused of having an agenda, while anyone reporting a negative experience is presumed either to be lying or exaggerated or must have deserved poor treatment because they were rude.

@jannier
ah fair enough. No I don’t, and don’t intend do.
I suffer with a condition that gives me vomit inducing pain, so I particularly don’t do anything that would voluntarily bring me pain.

@Alphabet1spaghetti2 I can assure you there is plenty of time for regret between diagnosis and death.

I’m not really sure what you mean by your second paragraph but I may be missing the cultural experience. I’m Australian and we don’t have to fight for GP appointments, we just call and make them. We have free screening mammograms recommended every two years and honestly I’ve never heard anyone here complain about the program or imply that it is in someway harmful to women.

@Remaker if you aren’t diagnosed then there can’t be any regrets. Unless I’m missing something vital - no screening and no dr appointment for whatever you need/maybe worrying you = no diagnosis. As far as I know there is no other way of discovering whatever my body may or may not be harbouring. Perhaps it can be diagnosed by my Facebook likes????!

and yes, you are very lucky to missing the cultural experience of attempting to get a dr appointment in the uk!

so you would rather live in a slowly deteriorating body, with uncontrolled pain and increasing disability, going downhill for a year or two until death, rather than get a diagnosis and treatment?

Literally everyone lives in a slowly deteriorating body.

True, but quality of life is important for most of us. I prefer to be healthy and pain free.

Thinking just about my closest family, every single one of us has had at least one major medical intervention without which we would either have died or been left with chronic health issues and poor quality of life. I am incredibly grateful to be alive at a time when health care has been able to help us so much. It's not perfect, of course, but life expectancy and quality of life is so much better for most of us in the UK these days.

Obviously we are all deteriorating all the time but most of us want to live to see our children grow up, to meet our grandchildren if we have any, to enjoy a period of retirement at the end of a long working life. Perhaps I'm not catching your tone right, but this sounds like fatalism to me.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g Thinking just about my closest family, every single one of us has had at least one major medical intervention

Same here. And if I’d refused my C-section as an “intervention” my Dd and I wouldn’t be here. A blanket refusal on medical interventions seems rather fool hardy.

DH has had a stroke and cancer. With his medication he has a very good quality of life.

I think some people underestimate how living with pain and disability can affect their quality of life. A stroke, heart attack, diabetes or other serious medical event doen't always kill you straight away.

Breast screening extends the life of one woman for every four that experiences the harms of treatment. If treatment were risk/harm free, that would be fine.

But it isn't.

And no woman wants to think her chronic cough after radiotherapy, her post surgery breasts, her long term chemo effects were unnecessary for her, so she tells herself her "life was saved". Not "screening ruined my life, but psychologically once I knew, I couldn't live with cancer in my body."

I trust the studies, the evidence. Not anecdotes of "it saved my life!" Because of course women have to believe that. There's roughly a one in four chance it did.

fairypeasant · Today 09:13
Literally everyone lives in a slowly deteriorating body“

Have you had cancer?

I keep saying this - you are told if your cancer is aggressive and going to kill you. You know if treatment has saved your life

Imo, the "saved a life" language isn't helpful. Extended, maybe, for some. Quality of life is the important thing, and cancer treatment can destroy quality of life, even when needed. Knowing you have a cancer can destroy your life whether you have it treated or not.

The science suggests otherwise. I know you believe this, and that's fine- you're entitled to have that religious belief that at screening they can then say categorically "this will save your life" "this one is fine to leave" and that is possible, and causes no harm.

It doesn't make it true.

no life is ever "saved" though, is it, it is only ever extended.

Without cancer treatment I would have been dead by next Christmas

With it, I have a 90 % chance of living another 5 years, and a 50% chance of living another 20 years, and who knows? I could live another 40

@MrsSkylerWhite

I don't see what my personal health has to do with this? I'm not telling anyone here anything about my personal health. It's irrelevant.

We all die. Most of us with a cancer. A large proportion of a cancer.

Some people will die from treatment for a breast cancer picked up on screening that would never have harmed them... How many of those are ok to "save a life"? If we accept it happens (it does- those on chemo, for example, getting sepsis), if that's a non-zero amount of women... Then how many are ok, to pick up and treat another woman's cancer who "would be dead by Christmas"?

This is what the papers consider, if you go and read them. And the evidence and arguments aren't clear one way or the other. That's why some women decide against screening. I haven't said whether I participate in screening- how I have weighed up the pros and cons. I simply respect that many women weigh it up, and decide against screening. These women deserve not to be shamed, given emotional polemic, and bullied.

fairypeasant

because your comment that “
Literally everyone lives in a slowly deteriorating body” will be offensive to many people who have cancer or whose relatives have died slow, painful deaths. The natural rate and degree of deterioration of an aging but otherwise healthy body bears no comparison whatsoever to the suffering and degradation that many cancers bring.

Ah, I understand.

But, everyone does live in a deteriorating body. Cancer deteriorates it. So do most other disease processes. Everyone gets ill, everyone deteriorates, everyone dies. Yes, some deaths are "better" than others. But a cancer death can be a "good death" and a COPD death can be a terrible one.

It's all irrelevant to screening discussions. In terms of screening- we're all going to die. It's about when, and how many healthy, quality of life, years you get. Cancer treatment, as well as the psychological impact of knowing there is a cancer, impacts QoLYs.

Everyone dies. Everyone's body slowly deteriorates, as long as they live long enough. Fact.

I don't see what my personal health has to do with your choice to be offended.

@Nimbostratus100 my body has been deteriorating since the day I was born.
In my 6the decade I’m nowhere near as fit, flexible or healthy in any way as I was when I was in my first decade. . Fairypeasant has said it far more eloquently than myself.

As I’ve said before we all have to die of something. And even if diagnosed there is no guarantee of survival and treatment is not a walk in the park. Far rather be able to enjoy a short happy time than a long miserable one.

fairypeasant · Today 10:33
I don't see what my personal health has to do with your choice to be offended“

It doesn’t. I hope that you live long and prosper. What is offensive is someone with no personal experience suggesting to other women that they should reject screening.

I haven't disclosed my choice about screening, or my health.

I haven't suggested women should reject screening.

I've said it's understandable why women do- that the pros and cons are not clear cut, and that those who decide not to go shouldn't be stigmatised, infantilised, or bullied by people like you, who appear hard of reading and scientific understanding.

I had a friend diagnosed with bc, who after researching stats, decided she didn’t want certain treatments because of the over treatment angle. She was fine - for about 18 months and then it came back and she died.

I had cervical cancer caught by a routine smear. It was an aggressive one and I was very lucky it was caught when it was.

If some posters are over zealous in their trying to persuade people it’s a good idea to take up screening, it’s because we want the best for the reluctant people. We care that some people will die unnecessarily. Our pushiness comes from a good place.
Yes, it’s up to people to make their own decisions, but how many people are diagnosed at a later advanced stage and then massively regret their earlier anti screening stance? The vast majority I should image. Lots of “if only” regrets.

We are pushing you to go for screening because we care. I definitely wouldn’t be here now without medical intervention for my cancer, and it was the screening that meant I had a better chance and less invasive treatment, because it was caught earlier.

But of course everyone can make their own decisions. If a thread such as this persuades just a tiny proportion of the reluctant people to go, then it’s worth the debate imo.