Word: paps
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Advances in diagnostic exams and hormone treatments have drastically cut the incidence of cancer of the uterus, ovaries and cervix over the past five decades. Pap smears that detect abnormal cells in the cervix before they become malignant have contributed to a 75% drop in cervical cancer since the 1950s. Wider use of birth control pills and hormonereplacement therapy (with estrogen and progestin) have decreased the risk of ovarian and uterine cancers. Recent research also suggests that in some cases, a low-fat diet can cut the risk of cervical cancer even further...
Still, an ounce of prevention--or at least early detection--is worth a gallon of cancer-fighting drugs. Ever since the introduction in the 1950s of the Pap-smear test, which allows doctors to detect changes in the cervix before the tissue becomes malignant, both the incidence of cervical cancer and its death rate have plummeted in industrialized countries. (One out of two American women who develop invasive cervical cancer have not had a Pap test in the preceding five years.) Unfortunately, cervical cancer is more common in poorer parts of the world, and among underinsured and uninsured Americans...
...reduce the risk of cervical cancer, all women should get a Pap smear annually, starting at 18 or whenever they first have sex. (More than 90% of cervical cancers are caused by a common virus that is sexually transmitted, although only a fraction of infected women develop the malignancy.) If you have normal tests three years in a row, you may, at your doctor's discretion, begin having them less frequently. But don't be fooled into thinking you no longer need a Pap smear after menopause. As long as you have a cervix, you need to get tested...
When I told my wife, who is also 52, about my day-long physical, she wondered if she would have had the same experience. Not exactly. A mammogram, pelvic exam and Pap smear are obvious differences. The effects of hormonal changes associated with menopause, like hot flashes or bone loss, would also be tested. Beyond these, says Dr. Richard Lang, "the issues are the same, but modified by gender...
...astonishingly pervasive presence of drugs and gun violence, a sort of postmodern lostness and indiscipline. The self-absorbed fecklessness of the adults--the abdicated parents in most of these dramas, often useless druggies and alcoholics themselves--makes the reader despise them in a way he never quite hated Pap Finn...