How do they do a mammogram if you are flat chested?

[NoNorks]

I have one booked for next month but am wondering how they are going to do it as I am fairly flat-chested. I just remember the last time it was painful and somewhat farcical...

bump

or rather, no bumps

They normally do mamograms with an x-ray machine that rotates so they can do alot of different angles which give them different views. Try not to worry, they know women come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes.

scrooged - hmm, but you see the one I had a few years back was a big machine like a book press/mangle. I was asked to place my tiny nork on a sort of metal table and then another flat bit came down on top of it and squashed it HARD. It was agony and made all the worse by the fact that the machine was rather too high so I was standing on tiptoe.

{weeps at the memory}

This woman's asking a similar thing.

Yes. It just gives them a different image. It needs to squash down. The radiographer should offer you something to stand on or bring the machine down to your height though.

It'll be OK. there are worse procedures, a barium enema or colonoscopy for example, 6 hours of not eating followed by medication that makes you shite all night, you then go to the hospital with a red raw bum where them shove a tube up it, fill it with fluid and air. This really is not nice. It's got to be done though.

uriel - thanks
Sounds like they used the mangle on her too tho...

scrooged - yes, i know worse things are done to people
Since the bit of my nork that feels funny is more towards the armpit i just can't see how they are going to be able to 'see' anything...

They do alot of different views using the machine.

Sorry, they move it around so to do all the relevant bits of you.

Ok, will try and chill.
First I have to try and get the time of the appointment changed so I don't have to take the small DDs. I don't want them seeing me with my tit in a mangle.

They won't let them in with you, the machine gives off x-ray like radiation. Patients take their children with them if they have to, the radiographers don't mind, it means they can sit outside for 20 minutes whilst you are being squashed.

They are only 5 and 2 yo. i don't want to leave them out in the corridor...

thanks, have to go, am tired of changing back and forth between this name and my usual one...

Another good reason to ask for an ultrasound instead. They can move the sensor around, look at underarm tissue and migrating tissue -- and no risk of radiation-induced changes in the breast. Ask for an ultrasound!

there was something in the BMJ saying MRIs were more effective.

Are you aware of the slight controversy surrounding diagnosis and therapy for DCIS?