The Torture of a False-Positive Mammogram

Now they tell me.

It took doctors and scientists on the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force seven years to reverse their recommendation that women have mammograms every one or two years once they turn 40, saying the tests triggered too many false alarms. But I already knew that they can do more harm than good -- at least in my case.

I am the woman they are talking about.

I had just turned 40 when my doctor told me it was time to start the recommended routine of annual mammograms. Since insurance covered it, I dutifully made the appointment.

It was late December, a few days before Christmas, when I found myself standing in a cold radiology office, my breasts gripped tightly in the maw of a mammogram machine. It was the uncomfortable position that any woman of a certain age is all too familiar with.

After waiting for what seemed like hours -- but was merely minutes -- the mammography aide came in. The radiologist wanted to take another image of my right breast, she said. Oh, and a sonogram, too.

This is not good, I thought.

Never mind that breast cancer is the one cancer that doesn't run in my family. That neither my doctor nor I had felt a lump. Or that I was a model patient who had never missed her annual checkup. My husband, a health economist by trade, deduced that I must have one of the many "false positives" so common in medical testing.

"I'm not sure I really had an 'OMG, it's cancer' reaction," he recalled.

Of course he didn't.

I, on the other hand, expected the worst. My first thought: I wouldn't live to see my 10-year-old son grow up.

I tried to put it out of my mind, hoping that my husband was right and that I was making too big a deal of it. But that holiday season was filled with sleepless nights and constant angsting over what-ifs.

My medical records show -- because, believe me, I blocked out the details -- that I had a second screening on Dec. 31. Happy New Year, indeed.

The radiologist reported nothing dire but suggested "watchful waiting" for the next six months. Six months? My personal doctor disagreed. The only way to know for sure that I didn't have a tumor -- did he have to use that word? -- was to have a needle biopsy of my breast.

Now my reaction was physical. My lips went dry. My palms turned sweaty. A pit grew deep in my stomach. I started to feel light-headed. Was this really happening to me?

Two weeks of agonizing uncertainty later -- no openings on the schedule before then -- I was in a hospital outpatient surgery unit. The local anesthetic did its job, though I would have preferred a general one. When it was over, I was left with a small scar -- though a scar nonetheless -- below the nipple of my right breast.

More waiting. When the results came back, it turned out to be nothing. A fibroadenoma with fibrocystic breast changes. Translation: I had lumpy breasts. Me and 60 percent of all other women.

I wouldn't get a final all-clear report until March, when I had my third mammogram in as many months. Although my anxiety eased after the biopsy results came in, I later became "hysterical" -- my husband's word, not mine -- when I thought the hospital compression bandage had permanently flattened my breast. It hadn't. But I was still plenty upset.

I also was lucky. And I know it.

In retrospect, my experience is trivial when I think of dear friends who did have breast cancer that was found and treated early thanks to regular mammograms. Or the ones for whom detection came too late.

I certainly hope the new guidelines don't discourage women with close relatives who have had breast cancer or who are genetically predisposed to the disease from getting regular screenings.

Still, I can't help but think: Wouldn't it have been nice if these new standards had been in place back then?

Not that it matters. Tomorrow is my birthday and let's just say I'm over 50 now. For women in my age bracket, the guidelines are clear: mammograms every other year until I'm 75.

Or in the dreaded words of my doctor: "Looks like it's that time again."