Question:
Article - Obese And Overweight Women Less Likely to Receive Mammograms And Pap Smears

   — Kim H. (posted on May 8, 2000)

May 8, 2000
I answered a post similar to this previously. I was an obese female and took extremely good care of myself, I had mammograms every 6 months. Exactly every 6 monthly. For 3 years. Questionable areas were explained away with, "Well, we can't really tell because your breast are so massive." A simple ultrasound would have identified the problem and my PCP asked for one. And I pointed that request out to the tech. But the head radiologist said it wasn't necessary. So when I first felt my lump I wasn't concerned, because my mammograms were "clean" according to my doctors. I believed my doctors and the lab results. And even when I mentioned my lump, I was blown off, "Hard to tell" I was told. Yet it took one female surgeon 30 seconds of looking at past mammograms to say, "There has been a terrible mistake" and decide to order a biopsy. I had stage 2 cancer by then, my tumor was 2 inches in diameter. Had my PCP not insisted I be evaluated yet again I'd be dead, just like my mother-in-law who was obese and diagnosed with breast cancer the month after I was. She wasn't as fortunate as I was and died 5 months later. I don't think my mother-in-law and I were the exception...I think we were the poster children of what the rule is when dealing with obese females. I believe there are countless obese females out there who care plenty about their medical status and try to take care of their needs. I think it's the medical profession who blows people like myself off. I, for one, will never trust any doctor and lab results again unless the result are checked and rechecked. If any doctor I take on in the meantime doesn't understand that, well too bad for him (or her)!
   — Alicia B.