Dubai's Desperate Housewife

I don’t know what I expected a mammogram to be like. I think I’d seen pictures of women with their faces squidged sideways and their boobs held in clamps. I’d imagined these poor women dangled for 20 or more minutes by their nipples, while a noisy machine clunked and whirred and the women froze, half naked, in arctic air-conditioning while a scowling male doctor looked on. I was imagining it was something to be endured.

Squidge

The reality, at least at the clinic I attended, was far from that. It was done by a lovely Filipina lady – and it was over in about two minutes. The room was warm, it wasn’t humiliating (well, only the bit where my boobs were so tiny I had to question whether they would actually make it into the machine) and it didn’t hurt.

After the mammogram, this clinic also does an ultrasound just to double-check. The ultrasound nurse used warm gel – why don’t they use that when you’re pregnant? – and told me at the end of it that she hadn’t seen anything to worry about, just one little cyst.

The best surprise came at the end, though. I hadn’t asked what it would cost but I guess I was expecting something in the range of Dhs 1,500. It was actually Dhs 362* and, for some reason, they deducted 25 per cent, leaving me with a bill of Dhs 217. If you do it annually, that’s 59 Fils a day for peace of mind. Not bad.

*The 4-D ultrasound was an extra Dhs 508. I went to the Well Woman Clinic at Allied Diagnostics. Tel: 04-3327117