The big issue debated in the news these last few days is a report by a U.S. Preventive Services Task Force suggesting a change in age for women having mammograms. They now say women ages 40 – 49 should not get mammograms at all and they should start at age 50 and they should only get them every other year. Further, women 74 or more should not get them at all. Finally, I am free and clear! This special Task Force also says there is evidence of potential harm to women having annual exams beginning at age 40 which outweighs the benefit of having them.
In terms of cancer of the uterus and the use of pap smears to detect the cancer, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is now suggesting pap smears should not start when a woman is sexually active but, rather, start with women in their 20s and only every two years instead of annually. This group says that more treatment leads to overtreatment and can harm a young woman’s chances of carrying a child to full term. They also said that “overtreatment of minor abnormal pap tests in young women and adolescents can lead to consequences such as preterm labor in some cases”
Women have faithfully followed the rules of the “professionals” for years. They usually do what the doctor tells them to do. They are kept in perpetual anxiety about their bodies during the tests and the time waiting for the results of the tests.
I, like most women I know, suffered from this kind of anxiety, as well as the humiliation of the test itself. After five babies by thirty years old, many “procedures”, a few “physician mistakes”, wrong prescription drugs, and multiple allergic reactions, I stopped listening and acting on what I was told. I began to take things into my own hands. At forty my rebellion started.
It was beginning to occur to me that when I was a child and through young womanhood, no one in my family or the community I knew seemed to die until they were very old. Girls got married young, raised their children and lived to a ripe old age. Rarely did I hear of a woman dying. If they did die it was usually from drinking too much alcohol, getting a stroke, breaking a hip and getting pneumonia, getting hit by a car, or dying in a fire. Breast or uterine cancer was unheard of to me. It wasn’t that people didn’t talk about it. They talked about everything all the time around me. Nothing was ever censored. I would have heard about it because I was always listening.
When I started to pose questions about the increase in womens’ cancers in the 70s and 80s to various medical professionals, I was told that studies and comparisons could not be made because no one kept records in the old days. I did believe it when they said no one kept records in the old days, but I didn’t believe the conclusion. The conclusion seemed too simplistic. The conclusion was not scientific. Just because records weren’t kept was no reason to assume there was no rise in cancers. You cannot say, as they did, that incidents of cancer have remained constant through the years. One could make the case, also, that the reason there were no records in the old days was that there was little or no cancer cases to record.
I had my own theory and it started its’germination on……….
One Halloween night in the 1960s my husband and I went to a Halloween Party where you had to come in an original costume. We were Catholic and of course the “forbidden” birth control pill was the Catholic issue of the day. My husband went to the party dressed as “the pope” splendidly outfitted in red velvet with a huge tall pope hat, and I dressed in a large puffy round white garment with a word on it saying “the pill”. We won 1st prize in the contest. Our friends, Jim and Claire came as Clark Kent/Superman and Lois Lane They took second prize. Clark Kent set up a little scene, ala Saturday Night Live Style. Someone at the party tried mishandling Lois Lane. He excused himself for a moment, went into a room, removed his outer clothing and came back as Superman, punched the offender, knocked him to the ground, and saved Lois Lane. I was thinking a lot about birth control pills in those days, especially after five children. Our small group of “Catholics” or “Roaming Catholics”, like my husband used to call us, was filled with creativity and mischief.
In those fun-filled and questioning days I was starting to theorize that perhaps something in “the pill” could do damage to the cells in women. I had nothing to go on but a hunch. Later, it was shocking to me that physicians were routinely x-raying women’s breasts as a way to give women a “heads up” on finding a cancer of the breast “early”. It was haunting to me as I questioned the annual mammograms. I asked myself, “ how can a woman’s body tolerate the constant onslaught of hormones in birth control pills and estrogen replacement therapy, and the annual x-rays to the delicate membranes of the breasts? It seemed to me that these new procedures on women may have something to do with the cancer they were getting. After all, if you x-ray the breast routinely, how many times would it take for a woman to get breast cancer? You hear so many women saying, “I was lucky, my cancer was caught early!” “ Thank God for my mammogram,” they also would say.
I had a few mammograms and pap smears myself when they first came “on the market”. I stopped doing them when my worry grew stronger every year about their effect. I told my gynecologist that all I get from the yearly pap smear is a yearly infection in the area he did his “snip”. I told him I would not take a mammogram because I felt it was harmful. Needless to say I did not make my doctor happy. He would get all red-faced with anger and told me he would not be responsible for my health. I told him I would take “full responsibility” for my own health. We had many arguments and I sent him articles I read to support my theory, making him even angrier. I stopped seeing him about ten years ago. I don’t think he is still alive, and he was a lot younger than me.
We all can see that breast cancer is epidemic! It is clear to me that something we are putting in our bodies, being done to our bodies, and being sprayed on our bodies has made cancer the problem it is today. The scientific industry spends a lot of time and money on how to “treat” the cancer once you get it, but not so much on the reasons women are getting cancer. There is such pride in cancer research by keeping women alive who have cancer and there is less interest in finding out the reasons women get cancer in the first place. Maybe this will start to change.
I have told some woman close to me about my observations. It is a hard sell. There are a lot of people invested in cancer and/or who have a lot of money lobbying to keep things the same. I would love to know if records are kept about the history of each women who gets cancer. What tests they have done, how often. What medications they have taken and the medications their mothers have taken to get pregnant, what they are exposed to every day at home or at work. Do they spray their homes and gardens with pesticides, what foods they eat. Have they ever lived near instruments emitting high electricity or nuclear energy, etc.
I have included in my warnings about the danger of the “blue light” emitted by copying machines and the electricity given off from electric blankets as not being good during a woman’s pregnancy. Again, it is a hard sell!
In the past years I have grown tired listening to myself and have stopped the negativity in relating these observations to others and have started to enjoy life and let everyone do what they want to do. Up until now.
I understand some women are beginning to feel threatened and angry and feel that something is being taken from them when the suggested changes showed up this week. It is even becoming a political issue. Dr. Cheryl B. Iglesia , the chairwoman of a panel in the obstetricians group that developed the Pap smear guidelines said “there’s no political agenda with regard to these recommendations.”.
The pink ribbons of breast cancer are all around us. There is pride being a “survivor”. There are walks and runs and bike rides for cancer. It is great that women are supporting women. Anything that brings women together for a cause is wonderful.
However, women have to look beyond what is presented to them. Women must demand that the scientists do exhaustive analysis of the history of the women who are getting cancer. We all know a lot of money has been spent working to get women free of cancer and there must be money spent trying to find out how they got it!
Gail Collins, a columnist for the New York Times recently wrote an article about her own cancer. She had mammograms every year like clockwork. In 2002 she said she found a lump in her breast after having a mammogram and was given “a clean bill of health”. Her doctor said that Ms Collins probably would not have gotten cancer if she had not taken estrogen replacement therapy.” Now there is a doctor who knows something is amiss and is not afraid to say what he thinks. There may be HOPE, after all!