GET REGULAR MAMMOGRAMS. During the waiting days, you realize you were ignoring the signs. I had a feeling I was due for a mammogram, they usually sent me a reminder every two years. So here is the first thing TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOURSELF Like most women time is a warp, we are busy with family, husbands, grandkids, life and the thought comes to us every now and then, but meanwhile another years goes by. Because I was waiting for a surgery to send a reminder, I never checked and as it turned out it had been six years since my last mammogram. I had just reassured my daughter a few months back that I get checked every two years and that I was due now. (she was concerned because I had been using HRT patches for years and my mom had breast cancer in her early forties, as it turned out my tumor was not an Estrogen feeder, I had a niggling little guilt that I had bought this on my self by prolonged use of HRT; medical people recommend no longer than five years and I had been using hormone patches for twelve).
The way to remember to get your scan is to make a day each year say, 1st April, when you change the smoke detector batteries, or when there is a Commonwealth or Olympic games. If you need to be checked every two years, as soon as they start advertising the games (not the hunger games), you know it is time to make your appointment for a mammogram. Darlene Zchech a well known singer and Pastor in the Christian world, who has just been going through her own breast cancer journey this past year, was saying at a women’s conference that she would go each year on Christmas eve to have her Scan, then go shopping, only last year, by the end of the day, she knew her Christmas wouldn’t be the same.
I know many women who are over 50 years of age, and have never had a mammogram. With all the information that is thrown at us you would think we would all be right onto it, but the fact is it is like watching ads for third world organizations, we turn off the telly and forget about it, out of sight out of mind. Unless we make a specific day and lock it in, it just doesn’t get done, because the truth is, we really think stuff like this happens to other women, and we never think it will happen to us.
Get a diary, and don’t forget to look at it from time to time!
Breast Cancer Ready or Not 
