🌍 We deserve better than a Portacabin in a car park.
Kylie’s new Netflix doc — and Margaret Hodge on why we need to 'stop writing off older women'.
Happy Friday!
I had my first mammogram this week - a breast screening unit in a tiny Portacabin in the hospital car park. Walked in to find four women sat there waiting.
I checked in with the nurse, who was shuffling through papers, trying to find my form. “It’s the first one,” I said, trying to be helpful. She scooped them up and leaned back. “Look, I’m trying to maintain patient confidentiality here.”
Not a great start. You can’t swing a cat in here never mind patient confidentiality. Everyone can hear everything. She asked if I’d had one before - no. Then I might have to go to Brighton and get it done again, if the images aren’t sharp enough.
I was asked to take my bra off in the cubicle and come back out with my top on. Read the patient leaflet while I was waiting - you’re not supposed to wear deodorant on the day, as it can affect the results. Bugger. Bit late now.
A woman walked in, “It’s cosy in here!” She sat down next to me and another nurse came out and asked her to do the same - take her bra off.
“I’m not wearing one,” she laughed. “I can’t be arsed with that anymore.”
Lol. I said I can’t stand them either, especially underwired ones – torture garments.
“You won’t believe it. The other day this bloke came up to me on the street and said, ‘You need to wear a bra, love’…
“And I said, that’s none of your bloody business!” Good for her.
“Is this your first one?”
“Yeah, but I’ve heard all about it. Your boobs in a vice. Did you hear about the woman who got stuck in the machine during a power cut?”
OMG no 😳 Apparently, she was mid-squeeze when the power went off so had to wait for someone to set her free. Eventually, a bloke turned up. “I’m so sorry, love.”
WTF. Is there not an emergency exit button on these machines!?
“Nika Talbot”.
“Wow, it’s huge”. I made a joke about being tiny but she ignored that and explained what would happen. I had to stand in front of it while she moved my feet and boobs into the right position for the x-rays. I felt like a mannequin in a shop window. When she comes to life, anything can happen!
“Breathe in. And breathe out…” and then she tightened the grip. Ooooof. Sorry for reading the patient notes. A couple of hard squeezes and release. She did it again on the right side, even tighter this time, which took my breath away. “Do you have one breast that’s bigger than the other?”
“No idea, probably.”
Afterwards, she checked the x-rays and wasn’t happy with the detail, so round two - on one side only.
Took about 15 mins and I should get the results within two weeks - or a letter telling me I need to go to Brighton.
I left through a different door - presumably so you don’t start chatting to the women waiting. Took myself off to the cafe in the church and sat on the sofa with a hot chocolate. I had my laptop with me but didn’t feel like doing much. Felt wiped out for the rest of the day.
I will go to screenings as it could save my life. My mum had a lumpectomy recently (they found a small cyst while testing for something else). She was lucky, they caught it early and it hasn’t spread. Otherwise it would still be there - routine breast screenings stop at 70. You won’t be invited after that, but you can request it through your GP.
Considering it’s the most common cancer in women (1 in 7 will get breast cancer) – surely we deserve better than a temporary trailer in a car park. It feels like an afterthought. I know I can ask to be screened in the hospital but it’ll just delay things.
Thanks to Margaret Hodge for sharing her story and pushing for the upper age limit on screenings to be raised. Hopefully new AI scanners will bring the cost down.
We need to stop writing off older women. She spent years as a minister under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and understands how you achieve change. Keir needs to sit down and have a chat with her.
I am 80, with two new jobs, and I’m not prepared to be written off.
▶️ Kylie, a three-part series, is out on Netflix. She had a second cancer diagnosis in 2021 and talks about it here.
Nika xo
The whole NHS approach to preventative medicine is bizarre. If prevention is better than cure, you'd expect it to be priority number 1. It simply isn't. As with everything under control of groupthink quangos pf professionals, or worse, under control of a Health Minister in the central government, their number 1 priority is "saving" money on prevention to fund the very expensive drugs bill for treatments.
The PR material they put out on things like alcohol and smoking has always been pathetic, scare mongering propaganda that fails to inform people of detailed evidence available, e.g. the dose-risk relationships. What should be done is to inform people of the time it takes the lungs to clear the tar from smoking one cigarette or the recovery time for the liver from one unit of alcohol. Instead, they prefer an "all or nothing" approach, to a considered scientific and logical analysis of risk.