Bobbie Stephens Wright explains why, at the age of 65, she will no longer be going for her routine mammogram.
Recently I received an invitation to visit the NHS screening service for a routine mammogram. I have diligently enough attended every three years since I was first invited. This time I have hesitated and I believe for me this is the appropriate decision. It's not that I have simply dismissed the opportunity, quite the reverse. I have considered more carefully than ever before and I should like to document my reasons for this decision.
I remember quite clearly, visiting, accompanied by my aunt, the home of a relative who had died. At the time I was about seven years old. The body was in the coffin in the parlour, as was the custom in those days. I was at some pains to hear the various conversations which took place because the people present appeared to be trying to obscure the cause of death of the relatively young and beautiful lady, whom I had liked very much. It will be anticipated no doubt that she suffered from the big 'C', but from the actions of the adults one might have thought it was the plague. The word breasts seemed high on the agenda so it may be assumed that the lady had died from breast cancer.
Now this was 57 years ago and despite all the research which has been done and the ensuing treatments and procedures which have become available over the intervening years, women continue to die from this most dreaded of diseases. I have known many ladies who have bravely grappled with the disease and undertaken the treatment on offer. At the present time I only know one person who lives on. I even know of one lady who, having been given the all-clear a few weeks before, died of a heart attack. Her husband intimates to this day that she died of pure stress related to the prolonged and gruelling course of treatment she had been given. Of course, one could never say that this was an accurate assessment. However, it does give food for thought and on reaching my decision I have thought of her.
In summary, I have a happy life, a good, hardworking husband, two grown-up independent children and two wonderful grandchildren. If I were found to have some irregularity in my mammogram I would be pushed immediately out of my cosy comfort zone. Additionally, my husband, who runs his own business single-handedly, would be wrenched from his comfortable and carefree life. Even if we tried to protect the family from the news by keeping a guarded silence, they would undoubtedly sense that something was afoot especially if grandma suddenly appeared to be bald.
At my age (65) I simply cannot see any reason to cause such stress and suffering unnecessarily to my family. Let me be clear. Life, for me, at my age is not at all about longevity; it is far more to do with quality and I would prefer to live without stress for as long as possible. The positive effects of the decision could also be far reaching in the respect that the NHS can save the money involved in the screening process, plus if I do die, the state will save on my pension and other benefits due to persons of my age, bus pass, free prescriptions etc. I am not so naïve that I do not realise that this decision taken whilst I am reasonably fit, remarkable enough, given that I have endured ankylosing spondylitis since the age of 17, is different from living with the certain knowledge of terminal illness. I may turn out to be remarkably cowardly. Yet I still prefer to live in my cloud of unknowing. Whilst this is the case, I know death is the natural end of any life.
Ideally, I would prefer not to suffer the ravages of terminal illness and perhaps I won't. Who can tell? If I were a younger person with dependent children, then I would feel duty bound to opt for the longevity that treatment might offer and I applaud those who have undertaken the unpleasant procedures for all the right reasons. With some luck I will meet my end with the fortitude displayed by the remarkable Scottish philosopher David Hume. I am not particularly anticipating that there will await me a 'life after death' and this worries me not at all. I feel that I have done the best that I could during my life. I shall leave the world feeling that I made the best of the hand that I was dealt and that's quite as much as I desire. Those who have known me well may even miss me but in the world at large I will remain unknown apart from some scraps of published work. I see no reason to desire an ongoing spiritual life. There are in fact many reasons why I would not wish to be the silent witness to a world of much suffering, to which I could no longer contribute any kind of charitable help. It may be so that my best years are behind me but every day is a bonus and I intend to live each day to the best of my ability without regret.
Yet it was not always so, and my preamble into this work is meant to convey to the reader the comfortable place where I find myself, as compared to the confused and anxious medium plying her strange and misplaced talent in the environment of the Spiritualist Church. Misplaced, I say, because if this talent is a 'gift' – implying that it was bestowed by a 'higher power' – then it was wasted and relatively useless to me. Ever since I found I could act or play the role of medium, I have avoided doing so whenever possible; my first words, as reported by a close friend, were usually, 'Can't you get someone else?'. Those who believe they would like to be the medium often appear to discern a difference between medium and clairvoyant which I do not. I believe that only the situation or frame in which they are encountered is different.
Mediums, who occupy the main position on the platform of the Spiritualist Church, have a certain religiosity about them, which offers them the protection of believing that what they do there is a gift from a loving and heavenly father. On the other hand, whilst clairvoyants may display a certain religiosity, it is not necessarily the case and they may just work professionally, in demand not only within the church but also at the numerous and widespread psychic fairs and so on, which are often held in public houses.
As I have already intimated, there is no difference between the kind of information that is conveyed to the public within the church and that delivered at a psychic fair. Having said this, the type of information conveyed in the church is simply through a one-on-one 'cold reading' of a person in the congregation, carried out without tools such as Tarot Cards, Crystals etc. If the information in the church is resisted by the person to whom it is directed, then the medium will have to blame herself or her alleged 'guide', whereas in the other framework the clairvoyant is liable to insist that the information must be correct because the cards or the crystals or whatever say so. In the full glare of the congregation of a church no-one should doubt that the expectations and then the subsequent reactions can have a profound effect on the ability of the medium to carry out her work.
There were some early years when I tended to buy into the idea that I had been given some kind of gift, but then my intellect began to clash with the ideas, that seemed to have a certain resonance with others but not with myself. These days I am more used to thinking of my strangeness as a psychological disposition and, at the root, a way of dealing with a far from perfect life. Perhaps I will be forgiven for appealing to the fictional work of Hilary Mantel in Beyond Black as closer to the mark of the medium, rather than the many biographical and even autobiographical writings of mediums and clairvoyants. Show me any medium or clairvoyant and my first assessment will be that they suffer or have suffered from low self-esteem. My next claim will be that they are, despite their many verbal resistances, afraid to die and very much in need of the kind of affirmation that any public can give them.
After all, when anyone says 'yes' to your 'message' they are really assenting to a whole framework of belief. Within the Spiritualist Church this amounts to a belief in God, guides, and on-going life after death, which doesn't just affirm the spirits of the departed but also those who vicariously share in the process between the medium and congregation. In some cases it may be different in the context of a psychic fair but the clairvoyant is still affirmed as a person employing a valid and worthwhile process of communication.
It all seems fairly innocuous up to this point, except that to make the claim that one is always correct in one's predictions is quite arrogant and very often untrue. The idea that someone is better placed to make decisions about the life of another can be at least presumptuous or at worst, even dangerous in some cases. And the idea that there is a 'right' road in life for a person and that a clairvoyant may have the ability to identify it is absurd; personal autonomy regarding life decisions seems, to me, a far more mature attitude to life.
It may well be asked how the former medium moved from her initial position to one that is so comfortable today. Happy at last to live with life's uncertainties rather than the supposed certainties of Spiritualism, particularly concerning a life after death and the belief that mediums are contacting and connecting with discarnate beings. That is quite a long story in which SOF has played a role. I could be convinced that the telling of the whole story may help, at least, someone out of the confusion caused by an unusual psychological disposition, understood and described in psycho-analytic theory as a fragmented personality. With much professional help I am no longer tempted to project experiences and aspects of myself or, in line with more current thinking, 'selves' onto others whether they are happy to receive this kind of information or not. I no longer require the esteem building process and affirmation of acting the role of medium. As I accept that my end is inevitable, I have found it easy to logically refuse a routine Mammogram.
Bobbie Stevens Wright is the former convenor of the North East England SOF Group.