Forgotten Sleep

My mother is a 10-year breast cancer survivor. She wasn’t diagnosed until the age of 52, but her doctors determined that she had been living with the disease for more than two years. Her age at her diagnosis puts me at increased risk for the disease.

I’m only 31, but given that my mother and my paternal aunt have both developed this insidious illness, doctors have previously recommended that rather than wait until I’m 40 to undergo my first mammogram, I should have one around 35. Now, a task force that did not include any mammography experts has published recommended guidelines that discourage routine screenings for women ages 40 to 49.

The argument: routine screenings in this age group has small benefit, and false positives create anxiety for the affected women. So, basically, they’re telling us that saving just a few lives (which in the great scheme of things is probably a few thousand annually) each year isn’t a good enough reason to recommend that all woman over age 40 have mammograms. Someone tell that to all the women who are still alive because they went in for their yearly mammograms at age 42 without any symptoms or family history of the disease, but yet, there it was, visible only on the mammogram results. Somebody, please, go tell the families of women who died from breast cancer because they hadn’t followed their doctor’s orders and undergone the test that the healthcare system is now going to recommend that more women follow this course of action.

Yes, I can see that this is an extremely good idea.

My real question, though, is at what point did it become okay to view good health among women as something without value. Women are responsible for growing and nourishing society’s children. We sacrifice our time, our energy and our sleep to be caregivers and support networks. Still, however, women find it harder and harder to access quality, comprehensive healthcare services. Not every women enjoys good pre- and postnatal care. There are scads of women who cannot even acquire preventive services.

A big portion of this problem is clearly the insurance companies. Rather than protecting patients, the insurance companies pretty much ensure that patients will encounter juggernauts when trying to get the services they need. Insurance companies will look for any reason possible to deny coverage. And, now, these guidelines, created by medical professionals, seek to force healthcare providers into being unwilling partners in a dark endeavor to save the money.

If the healthcare industry is forced to follow these guidelines, women will die. That is a fact. Mothers, sisters, daughters. Lawyers, teachers, journalists, missionaries.

Just because you never have to see the faces of the women who hear that they will die from breast cancer, just because you don’t have to hear the mournful wails of children who lose their mothers, doesn’t mean that enacting guidelines that will decrease the amount spent on healthcare services is ethical.

I’m lucky — I have the resources available to continue with my plan to get my first mammogram at age 35 even if my insurance doesn’t cover it. But there are plenty of women out there who aren’t. Denying them the possibility to potentially catch a horrific disease early and give them a fighting chance at saving their own lives is nothing short of criminal.