While sitting in a 100% full waiting room at a mammogram screening center earlier this week, we all got to chatting. Then one lady mentioned, "Annual mammograms saved my life!" She went on to say that six years ago, her routine mammogram showed a cancerous lump. As her doctor recommended, she went on to have surgery to remove the lump, radiation and chemotherapy. She correctly boasted, "I've been free of cancer for five years now!" What a wonderful success story for Lady Number One.
Both the Mayo Clinic and American Cancer Society recommend annual mammograms for women beginning at age 40 and every year thereafter. We can never neglect this! It would be a pity for the cancer to spread elsewhere in the body and, when it finally was so large it was painful, for the surgeon to tell us: "It is inoperable." In other words, it has spread so extensively that the surgery would kill you before the cancer did. I've had far too many patients dying of cancer. Don't let it be you!
Several years ago when I visited my brother and sister-in-law in Ireland, I accompanied Kathleen to her annual mammogram. We drove for at least a half hour out in the country to reach the screening van in one of the small towns. She asked me, "When do they stop doing mammograms in America?" I told her, "They don't. It's a danger all our lives. We get screened all our lives." Kathleen said, "In Ireland, they stop doing them after age 65." So much for socialized medicine! We don't want that in America! It always means LESS CARE!!
Lady Number Two had a different diagnosis and will soon have a different outcome - death! She has smoked heavily all her life. Now, in her early sixties, she's in the late stages of C.O.P.D. (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease). 'Obstructive' means the air can't get into her body adequately due to hardening of the tiny passages. She's been on oxygen for many years. For years, she hasn't been able to walk more than several steps before she gets out of breath. She has smoked while she was on oxygen, a really dangerous practice.
She didn't do hardly a thing her doctor recommended, whether it was take particular medicine or eat a special diet. Right now she weighs 93 pounds. She's in the I.C.U., on the ventilator. I expect she will be dead before the end several more days - or maybe tonight.
The point of relaying these two stories to you is not to give you health incentive, although if you got that, it would be good. The point is to 1) follow your doctor's recommendations to be healthy and feel good, even if you have to give up something hard, like smoking, overeating, etc. and 2) if you love someone, encourage them to get their annual screenings! It saves lives - maybe yours! It prevents early deaths - maybe yours!
Lord God, sometimes we are afraid to get health check-ups (what if they find something?) and sometimes we're just too cheap! Help us take good care of these bodies You have given us so we may do the work You would like us to do!
P.S.: men get breast cancer, too, and need their annual screenings!
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