Jewelry Maker Values Tips to Make a Mammogram More Comfortable

Karen Davis is busy handcrafting several new pieces of jewelry for an upcoming show. She plans to display several large unique pieces along with a number of other smaller attractive items. She talks proudly about her designs and the challenges of making them and in the process reveals an openness to sharing her strong opinions.

Mammograms are among the things she has strong feelings about and it wasn’t so long ago that they were mostly negative. Karen, who describes herself as having a large chest, said she’d stopped getting them after a particularly bad experience. She thought it was inevitable that they would be painful and she didn’t want to endure them. After seven years, however, her doctor insisted that she try again.

Karen braced herself for another bad experience, expecting to have to just grit her teeth and get through it. Her fear began to fade, however, as soon as she walked through the doors of Ella Health in Toms River.

“They made me feel at home. They made me feel extremely comfortable. I couldn’t believe how kind everyone was,” she said. “They made me feel like I was a person first, not just a number.”

She said she liked getting a real robe and having a private dressing room, but the best part was the exam itself. The mammo tech assured her up front that she wanted her to be comfortable, and then she went on to show her some things she could do to make things go smoothly such as moving her arm into a certain position.

“At other places, it’s just mush, gush and squish and they don’t care,” she said “I didn’t find that with Ella.”

She didn’t experience pain during the procedure and she didn’t have any pain after.

That appointment was a year ago. Just recently, Karen came back again, ready to once again make getting a mammogram a part of her regular routine. This time, she said, it was even easier and she remembered the tips from the previous year.

Now, as she talks about her jewelry, she also talks about how great a mammogram can be. She is eager to share with her women and assure them that it can be a comfortable experience.