So why does Ask a Mammographer exist?

Because I got tired of watching women talk each other out of going.

I watched the fearmongering spread on social media — women who had difficult experiences sharing their stories in ways that terrified the women who had not gone yet. And those women — the ones who actually needed to go, whose lives were quietly at risk — stayed home.

I saw a woman on Threads say she would rather treat herself to a spa day than deal with the inconvenience of a mammogram. And another woman — who had been through bilateral breast cancer, chemo, radiation, a mastectomy, metastases to her liver and her brain, and a five year prognosis — responded to her.

I will not repeat what she said. But I heard her heart in every word.

The compression is uncomfortable. It is not painful. It takes seconds. The machine does not use metal plates — that is a myth. You can have a mammogram on small breasts, large breasts, and in many cases during pregnancy. The mammogram does not cause cancer. It finds it.

What women are actually afraid of is not the machine. It is not the compression. It is not even the radiographer touching their breasts.