I had a mammogram yesterday. The mobile Kamanos Mammogram Unit visits work every year. Malloy provides this valuable benefit to us and picks up the tab. It’s a great benefit on so many levels. It’s paid for, we’re still on the clock, it doesn’t eat into our preventative benefit and we skip the hassle of making an appointment and driving all the way to the hospital.
There are two women who stock, set up, drive, and staff the mobile unit. The technician, Deb, and I got chatting about yoga. As she chattered on about her yoga experience (did it for a while and hasn’t done it lately), her meditation practice, and how she honors a different chakra each day by wearing matching jewelry and socks (all the same color, but different colors daily depending on the chakra), I was struck by how matter of fact and how normal/natural it all seemed. We could have been sitting at an outdoor cafe’, two friends chatting over coffee. Instead I was standing, naked from the waist up with her handling my breasts like a lump of clay.
We all have different talents. Deb’s is making a potentially unnerving, uncomfortable situation like a chat at a coffee house.
If you’re over 40, have a mammogram. Have one yearly. And I hope you find a technician as talented as Deb in the Karmanos Mobile Unit.