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 .

It's not that painful even after having a lumpectomy it wasn't that painful no where near like being hit in the boob or a car seat belt in an accident. Having breast cancer is very survivable if detected early I had a highly aggressive grade 4 tumour two surgeries, chemo and radiotherapy work through it all in childcare and am still clear and healthy 8 years later.....I would be dead if I hadn't had the mammogram never have met my grandchildren, travelled to Italy and Portugal, not seen my daughter go up the isle.
Are you scared of a filling? Because that is worse than a mammogram as I'd giving birth.
Would your mother have wanted you to risk an early death and leaving your loved ones grieving?

@Manybeards no I didn’t, I replied as you seem to think I made a point about choice when the one you quoted was about patronising staff - which you chose to say was about choice.

You’re right though that screening programmes aren’t perfect

My grade 4 tumour was too deep to feel.

So will the nhs

@Alphabet1spaghetti2 see below as we’re posting images

I've had a couple, one when the GP wanted my lump investigated and one routine. Both absolutely fine. The routine one was done and dusted in 5 minutes with lovely staff interactions in a clean and well-organised clinic.

Been gaslighted by various GPs and had some other dodgy medical experiences, so not the greatest NHS fan but the mammograms have been great.

and do you imagine that dealing with advanced reast cancer will be any less sore?

@Manybeards again - you are mixing up posters names!! I’m not the poster in your first picture that’s a different poster.

mammograms are not invasive

Like all screening, there are risks and benefits, and it's a personal choice as to how you weigh that up, and no one should be shamed for not wanting screening.

It's not always clear cut.

Same here.

I read the leaflet and made an informed choice to opt out.

Worthwhile to go. I usually go when the mobile can is parked up in Tesco car park. Last time I went the two females who work in it were having a stand up argument about who was going for lunch first!

@Nimbostratus100 screening is not looking for advanced cancer. It is looking for changes that may (or may not) develop into something that would cause disease. Sometimes, what's picked up and treated would never have caused disease, but the treatment does. Sometimes the radiation causes disease. It's not clear cut.

More tests do not always equal better. Let people weigh up their own health choices.

I know that’s not you ! You were replying to me saying it’s a choice !

I've opted out of mammograms. I go for cervical smears.

@Manybeards I give up - I can’t make it any simpler for you.

A good friend of mine was asked to take part of a study looking at reducing the age to give routine mammograms. She was below 50. No heath problems. Checked her boobs regularly etc. Anyway, the mammogram found a cancer. She had treatment and is cancer free now. If she hadn’t have been offered the chance of an early mammogram they may have only found it when the lump was bigger and who knows what the outcome would have been. I would urge everyone to jump at the chance of any type of cancer screening offered. I know it’s scary. And trust me I have health anxiety! But it’s better to know and get treated than to live in ignorance and miss the chance of life saving treatment. Please make sure you go ❤️ plan something nice after as a treat to yourself. It’s offered to find early cancers and hopefully meaning curative treatment. We are so lucky to be offered it xxxx

People make their own everything appointments. Or at least request a service eg ask their GP for a referral to a consultant.

If this brilliant idea of opting people in to a screening programme with forced appointments worked so well, don't you think more people would be attending?

I'm telling you how it made me feel about the service when I got opted in with no choice. It made me mistrustful. It made me feel infantilised. It helped me decide not to go as I've already heard plenty of horror stories of rude and uncaring staff. Plus it obviously isn't actually that great a screening programme as a lot of women / sizeable minority have unnecessary mastectomies and chemo off the back of it.

Why double down on 'no, it's the only way, of course it's normal to opt people in without asking, it's not painful and those other women are lying, you troll etc'. Why do that? Why not listen and think ... you know what, maybe a respectful approach might get that third of women back onboard. Or, you know what, maybe they have a right to their opinion and as screening is linked to a fairly sizeable number of women having unnecessary mastectomies, I will respect their decision not to have screening.'

This from the British journal of Cancer is what puts me off mammograms, not the pain or uncomfortableness:

However, there is a cost to women’s well being. In addition to extending some lives by early detection and treatment, mammographic screening detects cancers, proven to be cancers by pathological testing, that would not have come to clinical attention in the woman’s life, were it not for screening - called overdiagnosis. The consequence of overdiagnosis is that women have their cancer treated by surgery, radiotherapy and medication, but neither the woman nor her doctor can know whether this particular cancer would be one that could possibly lead to death, or one that would have remained undetected for the rest of the woman’s life.

My cousin was treated for breast cancer (although hers was from a lump not a mammogram) and the effects of the treatment on her has pretty much ruined her life. She can barely do anything now she is so constantly exhausted.

I would hate to have treatment that could leave me hardly able to get out and not know if the treatment was necessary or would never have come to anything if it had just been left alone.

Here is the article,
www.nature.com/articles/bjc2013177
It does recommend that women go for breast screening, but that many don't realise about overdiagnosis as they don't read the leaflet carefully or don't understand what it really means.

This medical article believes it should be abolished:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4582264/

More here:
www.newscientist.com/article/dn25513-scrapping-breast-cancer-screening-is-the-right-move/

This from
blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2020/04/14/susan-bewley-things-should-never-be-the-same-again-in-the-screening-world/

I'm certainly not saying women shouldn't go, just that they need to be fully aware of the implications before they do. The Swiss have talked about abolishing mass mammograms, it seems to be a very controversial topic and I'm still on the fence as to whether I will go or not (I have always been for smears though).

"who knows what the outcome might have been"

Exactly. So this way, she had treatment, surgery maybe, maybe affected her general health and risks in the long term, financial effects, and mental health effects. Maybe it stopped her dying early from breast cancer. Or maybe it over treated something that she would have died with, not of, aged 102. Who knows?

And statistically, the second option (the cancer not shortening lifespan, not necessarily living until 103!) is 4x more probable.

I can understand people wanting certainty over uncertainty but these odds are not appealing to me.

But it isn't painful for most people to say it will be agony for you because it was for me is not fair. Obviously if you went at a time when your cycle gives you tender breasts it would hurt, similarly if you already are sore or tender but that's not everyone

anyone can change their appointments

Most women are perfectly willing and able to go at the time they are given
Which is far more efficient than thousands of women ringing up to make an appointment

In what way is it "invasive"?? I had my first last year, it was literally seconds of discomfort, I really didn't consider it painful. We are lucky to have such screening available, I accept anything that is offered and am very thankful for it.