Jun
21
2007
Even though I’ve a few years to go yet before I reach 40, often considered the standard age at which one’s First Mammogram is recommended, my family medical history is such that I went for my first baseline mammogram this morning. It was pretty much everything I had expected, what with all the boob-squooshing discomfort.
Now, I do understand the need for the breast compressions during xray. Really. And RadiologyInfo lays it out pretty clearly:
Breast compression is necessary in order to:
* Even out the breast thickness so that all of the tissue can be visualized.
* Spread out the tissue so that small abnormalities won’t be obscured by overlying breast tissue.
* Allow the use of a lower x-ray dose since a thinner amount of breast tissue is being imaged.
* Hold the breast still in order to eliminate blurring of the image caused by motion.
* Reduce x-ray scatter to increase sharpness of picture.
Nevertheless, while the technician was trying to make my amply-sized “chestal-region” into something more closely resembling a pancake, my inner cynic couldn’t help but wonder: “if men had breasts and had to submit to this procedure regularly, would there be some significant advancements in the whole process?”
As an aside, I do know that
Breast MRIs have been suggested (to complement mammograms) for women in a higher risk bracket (with some significant requirements for what qualifies as ‘higher risk’), but according to the American Cancer Society’s guidelines, primarily because of a reported increase in false-positive readings over mammograms the breast MRI isn’t recommended across the board.
Jun
01
2007
From a CNN article:
With 1,700 students, Davidson College may be small. But you’d never know it when you see the stuff students leave behind at the end of the year.
In a large room at a fraternity house, stacks of clothing, furniture, lamps and electronics were already piling up days ahead of last Sunday’s graduation. Mixed in were odds and ends that could only wind up together in a college trash pile: a pair of giant Homer Simpson slippers; a collection of Pokemon cards; a batch of fashion disaster dresses you can only hope were costumes from a campus theme party called the Five Dollar Prom.
Boy, that took me back. When I was a college student in the early ’90s, I spent my summers working on campus. As a result, for three years I was witness to the aftermath of the campus exodus that most other students (having to vacate after finals) never truly saw. I was utterly gobsmacked that first summer, wandering through the mostly empty dorm I was to inhabit for three months and seeing all the crap that others left behind in rooms and hallways for the custodians to cart off to (presumably) the dump. It didn’t take us long to start scrounging around campus; the day or two after commencement proved to be best, and gangs of summer workers could be seen traipsing across campus with their hauls - one or two mini-refrigerators, various pieces of furniture and lighting, mixed tapes, unused notebooks, textbooks that could be sold to the local used bookstore for some extra pocket money, coffee mugs, sweatshirts and coats that looked barely used… you name it, you could probably find it somewhere on campus if you looked early and long enough.
I was pleased to see the email to campus folks this year that served as the yearly reminder of the Colby RESCUE (Recycle Everything, Save Colby’s Usable Excess!) program, created about a decade after our summer scavenging. While we students certainly found uses for some of the left-behinds, programs like RESCUE that gather the furniture, clothing, bedding, etc. and donate them to local charities put far more of the cast-offs to far better use.
(via The Kept-up Academic Librarian)
