Why are putting we putting up with painful mammograms?

Why are putting we putting up with painful mammograms?  I am 41 and I guess just now beginning to more seriously look after my health. So to do that I have been making sure that I go through all the health checks for women of my age.  My key question right now is – what is going on with womens health?

Perhaps it is my own fault for not reading up on things – I had not prepared for the process at all. All I had really seen of mammograms before were the pictures at the end, rather than anything on what happens during them.   TRULY the only way to describe it is that we enter a modern day medieval world where we have our breasts pushed onto a plate on a huge machine and then flattened. I do not have the largest breasts in the world so fair play to the nurse who managed to get my little ladies up there and into the machine. But WHOA – how do we not have a more gentle procedures in place – and why do women have to be subjected to this kind of thing on a routine basis? Is it not enough that we have no pain relief for IUD insertion or pap smears that we also have to have our breasts flattened to check for cancer?

I think a solution here is for a more gentle procedure — why that has not been developed until now is beyond me — when I speak to my friends about this they all agree it is a horrible thing to go through. One of my friends actually fainted after having her first breast done. I just do not understand why are putting we putting up with painful mammograms?

HG, United Kingdom

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