Mammograms suck. Still, I’ll get them.

Ouch. (Image via Wikipedia)

Is anyone else completely confused by the new breast cancer guidelines?

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force just issued this recommendation:

The USPSTF recommends against routine screening mammography in women aged 40 to 49 years. The decision to start regular, biennial screening mammography before the age of 50 years should be an individual one and take patient context into account, including the patient’s values regarding specific benefits and harms.

But ABC News reports

The American Cancer Society and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology are among the many groups that supported the old guidelines and have stood firmly by them since the United States Preventive Services Task Force released its new recommendations Monday evening.

Never mind the healthcare-rationing conspiracy theories. What I want to know is: what the hell do I do now?

I’m 38, and I’ve had three mammograms. Yep. Count ‘em. That’s because my mother had breast cancer, which puts me in a higher-risk group that doctors recommend for screening before age 40. And guess what? I’ve had two false positives.

This, as I understand it, is the danger: overscreening, overdiagnosis and overtreatment. At the time, it didn’t seem dangerous to me; if something is potentially wrong, I want my doctors to make damn sure it’s not.

Mammograms suck. The machine squashes your boob flat on cold metal plates — first horizontally, then vertically. It hurts like a bitch, especially if you’re built like a boy, as I am (though I’m told by better-endowed women that it’s no party for them, either). It’s like getting pinched really hard, over and over, by someone who hates your guts.

Depending on the nurse or technician, it can be a dehumanizing and deeply uncomfortable experience. And depending on the doctor, it can be terrifying and flat-out wrong. (Slate has an excellent article on the real and negative effects of such an event.)

Still.

In the end, cancer got my mother. It wasn’t the one in her breast but in her colon. And we blame her demise in part on underscreening, underdiagnosis and undertreatment. One oncologist (a breast specialist) laughed off her abdominal pain until too late. I still see his face in my sleep and I want to murder him. (That was in Japan, which has a system of socialized medicine. Hmm. Maybe the conspiracy theorists have something after all.)

So if my trusted ob-gyn tells me she thinks I ought to get a mammogram, I’m getting it. Even if she doesn’t, I’m not waiting till I’m 50 to check for the most common cancer among women. If I have to choose between getting pinched and living to see my little girls grow up, I’ll suck it up and deal.