I am not the original poster. This is a repost sub.

The original poster is u/autoflowergal. Originally posted in r/AskWomenOver30.

Light editing for readability.

Q for women who have gotten mammograms

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskWomenOver30/comments/d0wwq3/q_for_women_who_have_gotten_mammograms/?st=k16uke5x&sh=4b6126d3

hi! I am turning 50 in a few days and I pledged to myself I would start really going to DRs and start monitoring my health

as part of this, I am trying to psych myself up to get a mammogram. I am frankly petrified of the idea. I have pretty big boobs (which I've heard is actually better in terms of pain) and the idea of having them squashed between plates is killing me. I keep trying to manually squish them lol to see what it will feel like

did your mammogram hurt? how bad did it hurt on a scale of 1-10? if you had a good experience with a mammogram please tell me that too lol

if i get upset and say it hurts will they stop?

Relevant Comments:

• thank you, my mom has stage 4 METS, I'm pretty sure its not the heritable kind (HER 2 ) but I really want to make sure I don't get it and let it go like she did.
• Helpful tip from a poster: If you still get your period schedule it mid cycle, especially if your boobs are sore during periods. My old gyno suggested that and it helped, I have small boobs and it wasn't that bad. OP: I have a cyclical boob pain in one boob, ill do that, thanks!
• Another helpful comment: Yes, not comfortable, but not painful. More of a pressure, like holding something on your lap for a little too long and it starts to feel uncomfortably heavy. OP: I'm kind of hopeful this will be true for me, I've squished and squished and squished as hard as I can and so far have only felt pressure
• Another good tip: One thing I haven't seen mentioned is to make sure that you don't have any irritation underneath your breasts if that tends to happen to you. For my last mammo, I had irritation and when they pulled my breasts to position, the skin tore and it was quite painful.

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**UPDATE** To My Fretful Mammogram Q

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskWomenOver30/comments/dbhk38/update_to_my_fretful_mammogram_q/

here

first I want to thank everyone who responded, you were all a lot of help.

I did it

IT

WAS

NOTHING

now, I cant promise this will be the case for you. I could see where there might be some discomfort close to the chest wall for someone who wasn't very fleshy, but I really felt almost nothing, even the pressure on the fleshy part of the boob barely registered as happening

the most important thing I didn't find out before the mammo was that (at least where I went) the tech did NOT just press a button and inexorably squeeze your boobs between plates. she brought the plates down mechanically until she JUST touched the surface of my boob, and then she gently manually adjusted the pressure a little bit at a time until it was enough. this made it SO much better than I had imagined it would be

I had 6 pics taken, after I felt the first one was nothing the rest were a breeze and it was over before i knew it

I did take 4 advil an hour before I went, I have no idea if this effected anything

even if it had hurt some, it was so quick I think it would have been very tolerable

so hopefully this helps anyone who wants to get a screening done and is scared

thanks again for this community's input!