Dr. Anita Batman - physician, retired health official and breast-cancer survivor - says that, back in 1995, she thought she was too busy to have a mammogram.
So a nurse forced her to have one by making an appointment for her. She had never had one before.
"The mammogram in which I had the cancer was the very first one," said Batman
"I was a doctor going around telling every one else to have their mammogram," said Batman, who is a breast cancer survivor.
She was the regional health administrator for federal programs in the Mid-Atlantic states, based in Philadelphia. Batman now lives in Greenwood.
She had one breast removed. If the cancer had been discovered sooner, "it's possible I could have had a lumpectomy instead of a mastectomy," she said.
The value of early detection is one of the messages the American Cancer Society tries to get out to women during Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which is this month.
Sure, mammograms are scary.
That's what Beverly Smith, a deputy chancery clerk at the Leflore County courthouse, thinks, but she said she always gets hers.
Smith doesn't have cancer, but her sister and aunts have had it. That means Smith is at high risk.
"I wouldn't dare not have it - no," she said.
Batman said her message to women who have yet to have a mammogram is, "Please be more afraid that there are cancers too small to be seen that your mammogram can detect."
Mississippi, according to the Cancer Society, is one of the states that requires insurance companies, Medicaid and Medicare to pay for mammography intended for early detection.
Batman said when she was in medical school during the 1970s, students learned that one in 40 women might be expected to have breast cancer.
Now, the rate is one in seven, she said - but that's perhaps because women are living longer and breast cancer is more readily detected.
"It's not as nearly as deadly a disease as it was back then because of early detection and better cures, but mostly early detection," she said.
Shirley Lott, a Leflore County Cancer Society board member, said self-examination is just as important."Examine yourself - every day, every month. If it feels different, get it checked." Lott said she found her own cancer that way.
She is glad she did. Lott has been a breast-cancer survivor for a long time, since 1988. "That's 17 years," she said.
