Normal and Abnormal Mammogram Problems

Many an abnormal mammogram has been misread by radiologists over the years. It takes a special talent to read them.  Normal mammograms can actually be abnormal.

My friend Melinda was diagnosed  a few years ago with infiltrating intraductal breast cancer along with another less common type, but not the hereditary type.

She was a registered  nurse at the time.  She demanded to see the previous mammograms she had taken in each of the four years before.  Each year she had the mammogram she was told that it was negative.  When they looked at the x-ray film, the cancer was present in all of them.  She was now in a very advanced stage of breast cancer, stage 4.  She flew to Santa Monica to a conventional hospital there and underwent aggressive chemotherapy and almost died several times in the hospital.  She finally made it through but her hair is still white to this day.  She said she was so sick 24 hours a day and so mad they hadn't told her the first year that cancer had shown up on the x-rays.  She also had a lymphadectomy and still has a tennis-ball size lump in her left armpit making it very difficult to wear anything with sleeves.

Get a good read on your mammogram to avoid abnormal mammogram problems!  

To be sure you get the right result  -- if you get a mammogram done it's important to get a radiologist with a lot of experience to read it.  You can demand to see it yourself and have two or three other radiologists look at it for interpretation also. You want them to look for anything abnormal.  Calcifications often are present and those are sometimes called pre-cancers. But these should be pointed out to you too.  Ask a lot of questions.

It takes skill to read these x-rays and often things can be missed. 

Mammograms come up with many false positives also, which is one of many reasons some health professionals don't approve of them.  It has caused unnecessary anguish for many women who actually did not have breast cancer.

Also if you have a tumor and they press your breast against the plate for the mammogram, it can disturb the cancer cells and possibly help them migrate further to other organs-- lung, liver, lymph glands etc.

years ago we were exposed to a lot of radiation through dental x-rays and x-rays of limb and body involved a lot more radiation than they do.  We were told at the time-- Oh is.

Oh it's OK.  You get as much radiation on an airplane etc. But they have slowly reduced the amount of rads we're exposed too--- FOR A GOOD REASON.   There are alternative M.D.'s out there who now say not to have a mammogram.  Do your research! 

Yes certainly do your research on whether to have a mammogram or not.  If you do, make sure you get a proper reading to ensure that you don't get a normal mammogram result for an abnormal mammogram.