November 19, 2009
Dear U.S. Preventive Services Task Force,
I have listened with great interest to the news these last couple of days, because apparently you all have made a brilliant recommendation regarding women's health.
Is it true that you are recommending we put off our first mammogram until the age of 50? And after that, you want us to have one only every two years? Is this true?
And is it true that you're suggesting we stop doing our own self breast exams every month? I tell you what; we'll stop doing our self breast exams, when you tell our male counterparts to stop "examining" a certain part of their anatomy in public. Are all those baseball players checking for lumps? Because surely that's against your rules.
Idiots
And your reasoning in cautioning against self breast exams? That you don't want a bunch of women being scared by lumps that turn out to be nothing; and, after all, false positives occur and then we've wasted our time for nothing. Oh the horrors of finding out you are actually healthy after being fearful you had cancer!!! Your way is much better. Let's all bury our heads in the sand until it's too late to do anything about it.
Morons.
Brilliant People, long gone are the days when you get to pat our hands (or any other part of our bodies) and tell us "you don't worry yourself about such things. Let me handle it." The thing is YOU are not worrying about it and your way of handling it is to let potential cancer fester in our bodies for ten years or more. Probably less, actually, because by the time we get that mammogram, all hope will be gone.
I don't mean to be harsh but YOU PEOPLE ARE NUTS!!
I have a few suggestions for you:
My first suggestion would be that you visit the homes of women who were diagnosed with breast cancer IN THEIR THIRTIES. Look into their eyes and the eyes of their loved ones and then tell them "Um, yeah, ma'am, we really wish you hadn't gone and found that cancer on your own. It was entirely too early for you to be messing with this. You've totally messed up our research." *sigh*
Second, please PLEASE, PLEASE stop in at my family doctor's office and tell him that you don't want me to have a mammogram for the next seven years. Please do it. I will pay money to see the verbal annihilation that awaits you.
Third, put out a similar recommendation that men stop having their PSA checked. Let's ban prostate screenings. What's good for the goose......
Fourth, recommend an immediate halt to all insurance coverage of Viagra.
Fifth, why not recommend that all women start smoking two packs a day and eat a small tub of Crisco shortening for lunch? While you're at it, let's ban exercise, just for fun.
Now I know we are all just a bunch of simple minded little women folk who can't worry our pretty little heads about cancer and other things that might scare us, but we are watching. We know that you are a government panel of doctors and scientists. We know that this could very well become a part of our new American health care system. So we are watching and listening.
And if we start having coverage denied for mammograms and other cancer screening simply because we have breasts but are not yet fifty; well, then we know who to thank, don't we?
Just when I thought I'd seen my fair share of STUPID.....
Yours in good breast health (so far)
HW
No comments:
Post a Comment