8 years and still have mammogram anxiety.

lola12

Hi all,

I am trying to stop this worrying. I have a mammogram on Monday and my "what if's" are making me sick to my stomach. I was 1A back in 2010. Do you still worry when it comes time for a mammogram? My oncologist always tells me that chance of recurrence is less than 1%, but "what if?" How do you cope? Are you ever past the worry?

Trying to let the worry go, but wow it is hard.

Lola

May61

Hi Lola12

Know the feeling...I'm 5 years down the track and at 3 years I was going out of my mind come mammogram time. I was lucky enough to be able to get some counseling through our Cancer Society (NZ) and it made a BIG difference to how I handled the 'gitters' the following year and forward. The one thing I remember is to acknowledge those fears and ask yourself "can you do anything about it right now?" (get support, see a Dr, etc). If you can, do it. If you can't (or don't want to), you "shelve it" - say to yourself "I don't need to worry about this until the actual day of my Mammogram". Yeah, I know harder to do than say but in conjunction with the counseling it worked for me.