Necessary Roughness

What can we say of the yearly mammogram? The glass plate is cold, they make you stand so close to the machine your ribs bruise, and then they force you to hold these contorted positions and stop breathing for like a million minutes while they set up the shotAnd then, of course, there's the vise.That victim of  the revenge of Joe Pesci's character in Scorsese's  Casino comes to mind.Your eyeballs don't pop out like that guy's did, but it feels like two things further down might pop for sure.Oh I know, I know, you don't really get permanently disfigured during a mammogram, and it's a crucial diagnostic.It's just that you go in with two rough approximations of this shape on your chest:And two minutes later they look like this:I think I was even leaning over like this guy by the time we got done - and though he appears to be almost smiling,  I sure know I wasn't!