Boob job, revisited

I had a mammogram today. No, you're not reading an old post; I had to go back for more pictures, because whoever looked at the first ones saw something in them and wanted to get a better look to make sure that it was nothing. Or something like that.

I wasn't worried. They told me the first time I went in that younger women often get called back because the younger breast tissue can look a lot like whatever lurking evil a mammogram is supposed to expose. So aside from the fact that it's nice to be referred to as a "younger woman" at this point in my life, I was annoyed that I had to shlep back to another appointment to get my boobs squeezed between plastic and metal. I was much less amused by the procedure than I was during the first go-around, and not just because this time it was a little bit painful as they mashed and pulled my breast into more exotic contortions.

Perhaps anger is not the appropriate response when my doctors are just being careful, but I can't help wondering if it was really the best idea for me, a 36-year-old woman with no family history of breast cancer, to expose myself to radiation in order to get a baseline mammogram, when the odds were good that the results would come back inconclusive, and I'd have to expose myself again. I'm not saying it was a bad idea; I just don't know. That's the problem with modern medicine. We do what our doctors tell us to, because we think they have all this information and will lead us to do what's in our best interest, but in fact, what they don't know WAY outweighs what they do know for sure. Just ask my neurologist.

And how much do we really know about our doctors' decision making? Is it based on their belief that there is no ailment on this earth that cannot be fixed by the godlike powers of western medicine? Or on their fear of being sued? Or on the very latest information available and their desire to give us the best care possible? I like my primary care doc and believe that when she said I should get a mammogram she was driven by that last option, but I also think that very latest information, which contradicts the very latest that came out five minutes ago, may welll be contradicted by a study released next week.

The outcome of today's mammo, by the way, was that everything is A-OK.