When to Begin Routine Mammography? 
Looking Inside for Your Answer

by Karen Bauman, MA NMT

Do medical authorities with conflicting views confuse and frustrate you? It's not surprising that such a reversal in recommendations about such a sensitive and emotionally-charged concern is met with a wide-range of reactions. Probably all of us know somebody who has been touched by the suffering of breast cancer. And as women, we tend to have the concerns about breast cancer looming somewhere in the back of our mind.

The decision about when to start having mammographies is a very personal decision. A task force is looking at statistical data, which by it's very nature is impersonal. Therefore, a decision based on statistics cannot and should not be the ruling factor in making your decision about care.

At Women 2 Women Restorative Therapy, we try to help facilitate greater body awareness and going inside to listen for guidance. We have found in our patients that as they become more in tune with their inner wisdom or supernatural guidance, they find the answers that they need in the moment, including an answer to, is NOW the time for me to get a mammography?

I have read in the news anecdotes of women in their 30's and 40's who had a sense that something was not right and went for a mammography. For them, the decision meant early detection with successful care. They were listening to their inner guidance.

But I've also read anecdotes of women who are driven by fear due, sometimes as a result of family history, sometimes as a reaction to another's experience, and other times as a result of so much media attention on breast cancer. Of course, their fear sounds factual, logical, and very concerned. Nonetheless, fear will drive us to search out authorities outside of ourselves for answers that can only be found within. And fear will rarely lead us to the best course of action for one particular moment in time.

So, as we do with all our patients, we encourage you cultivate a greater connection with that part of yourself that can serve as a guide for you rather than the recommendations based on statistics of the masses.