http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/BRCA

Remember, mammograms are only once a year and the next day after the test a fast growing cancer could show up and you'd be sol (happened to a good friend of mine). I guess if there were "extra" precautions I could take, I would.

I don't bother with mammograms anymore (no cancer of any sort, really (grandfather has prostate cancer, don't think I'll inherit that and he was 82 when he died) anywhere in my genealogy for the last couple hundred years that I can see. I play a bit looser with my health screenings now that I'm 60 and not going to die "young".

I hate the way statistics are used to make it look like one should take X med or have Y procedure or there's a 47% greater chance you'll die of it before your 92 or something. If you look at the literal "chance" of you getting something or other because of a particular condition you may have, it can get ridiculous. I've lost almost all respect for medical reporting/knowledge that uses statistics in that way. We focus on the statistics and what we think they mean instead of on the person and what that person needs.

My blood pressure was recording ridiculously high at my doctors for a couple years (I mean they even realized it, pointed out that with readings like I had I was theoretically in cardiac arrest and should be in an ambulance on the way to the ER but was sitting calmly in their office :-) and I was resisting bp meds and they started with the percentages of risk for heart, stroke, the usual. Turns out the pain of the blood pressure cuff is excruciating and causing the high readings; if you use a calibrated wrist cuff my bp is "normal". I looked up the literal percentage after they were leaning on me with their statistics and for others in my age, with my alleged readings, were they "true", etc. the chances of a heart attack/stroke in the next 10 years (I'm going to die of something! I'll be 70 in 10 years) was 1 in 10 instead of 1 in 3700 or something if I had "normal" blood pressure. I'll take 1 in 10 odds any day, never mind at my age when the odds of dying are literally getting greater each year anyway?