My Madhouse with a Mammogram

     It’s smashing time, the annual ritual in which my twin orbs are pressed into pancakes and x-rayed, to be studied by a stranger.    
     And I’m a “call back,” one whose pictures weren’t “quite right,” so I’ve held my breath through another torturous compression. Now, I’m trapped in a waiting room. My choices here? To flip through a twenty-six-year-old magazine about houseplants (I’m not joking), or read an article about how supermodel Gisele Bündchen battled anxiety.     
     Why would I be anxious?     
     A cheery tech appears and announces the second shoot was “questionable.” I’m sent down the hall for an ultrasound where I’m introduced to a whirring machine named Unetixs. I wonder if this rhymes with “lunatics.”      
     Then I’m camped in another Hades waiting room. A Martha Stewart magazine from sixteen years ago tells me “100+ Ways to Get Festive” for Christmas - and it’s August.     
     Am I going crazy?     
     One wall of this room is painted green like overcooked peas, which matches my flap-open gown that I clutch to keep from exposing myself.     
     Two hours have crawled by. I guess that’s why I’m called a “patient.”     
     The doctor appears. He announces that my anomaly is my “new, best friend,” a water cyst. Nothing to worry about.     
     I breathe again, dress, and walk out the automatic double doors, shaking my head. I know mammograms can save lives, but something about this process strikes me as inherently degrading, dehumanizing.     
     So when I have the opportunity, how can I create an environment that showers sensitive dignity on others in their most vulnerable times?