Flash Your Breasts

Okay, with a title like that, what is this blog entry about? Flashing them on the subway? I've been known to flash my significant other in the morning as he drives off to work, me at the front door--just to give him something to remember me by as he makes his way through the day. But that's not what this is about. No . . . LADIES, get your mammogram.
DO THEY WEAR HIGH HEELS IN HEAVEN is out from Red Dress Ink. The heroine in it has breast cancer, and it's her odyssey through illness with her friends and family, the type of experiences in which you learn who you can really count on when the chips are down. When I was hospitalized, near death, sick as a dog (though that would be an insult to dogs) 12 years ago with a really stubborn bout of Crohn's disease, my best guy friend abandoned me . . . and the woman across the street, who was a friend but not that close to me, was there for me through thick and thin in ways that still choke me up. Illness clarifies life. I'm gratified by the really nice reviews the book is getting and some of the reaction to the universal truths I tried to write about . . . but even MORE wonderful would be if it prompted some women to get their mammograms. Don't put it off!! Just do it. Yeah, the machine flattens them like pancakes and contorts them in ways that likely would delight someone into S&M, but it's not that bad.
So, in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and in honor of all the sisterhood of women out there who have fought the disease and both won and lost, flash your breasts at your nearest mammogram technician.