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Kimmy Phuong Hoang has helped hundreds of women get their first mammograms. But when it came time to get one herself, she was scared. Learn how she overcame her fear and why she says regular screenings are so important.

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My First Mammogram

Kimmy Phuong Hoang has helped hundreds of women get their first mammograms. But when it came time to get one herself, she was scared. Learn how she overcame her fear and why she says regular screenings are so important. By Fiona Wagner

A Vietnamese woman stands outside her apartment building, unable to understand the Canadian voices around her. She feels scared and alone until she sees Kimmy, the tea party lady.

She knows Kimmy will show her how to use the bus and get to the hospital on time for her appointment. Kimmy will explain what the technologists say as they gently examine her and squeeze her. She knows that Kimmy is there to help her get through her first mammogram.

Kimmy Phuong Hoang is a women's health educator with Hamilton Public Health Services. Since 2003, she's helped hundreds of women learn about breast health and get their first mammograms. "I talk with the women about physical check-ups and about breast exams. We talk all the time," says Kimmy.

But when she turned 50 a year ago, she put off making an appointment for her own first mammogram. "For me, I was still scared," she says. With her friendly face, soft giggle and eyes that light up when she smiles, it's hard to imagine Kimmy being scared. But for a woman who's experienced so many challenges in her life already, facing her fears and having a mammogram was just one more to overcome.

In 1991, at the age of 35, Kimmy, her husband and their three young children left Vietnam to join her six brothers and two sisters in Hamilton. While she had an easier voyage than her siblings, who'd escaped Vietnam by boat eight years earlier, it was still dangerous to leave. But it's what she needed to do, she says "to go to school, to work, to have a meaningful, happy life."

While she'd been a high school teacher in Vietnam and could speak English, she still found the language a challenge. Her first job in Canada was boxing cookies in a bakery, followed by a job as a sewing machine operator at a factory. But she wanted to do more: she wanted to make a better life for herself and her family. "We were lucky to come here," she says softly with her hands clasped in her lap. "Now, we think about how to pay back. Helping other people -- that is the way."

In 2003, during a training session for volunteer work with Vietnamese seniors, Kimmy found the job posting that would help her become a teacher again. Becoming a women's health educator, whose job is to host information sessions for women from immigrant communities, felt like a natural choice for Kimmy, having taught biology and family studies for 10 years before coming to Canada.

She understood that it wasn't easy for Vietnamese women to talk freely about mammograms and Pap tests. She knew that many women thought they should only go to the doctor when they were sick. Sometimes, it was simply not knowing English or the fear of talking to a male doctor that kept some women away from the health clinic. "They can't speak English. They do not know how to ask the bus driver where to take them. Some women don't know how to use a bus ticket," she says. "Some women have been in Canada for five, 10, 25 years and never had a mammogram, never had a Pap test."

So, Kimmy started hosting tea parties. Every two weeks, she invites women to join her at the public library, the YWCA or the seniors' centre to drink tea and talk. At least 20 women attend each tea party, and 50 people show up for parties celebrating special occasions such as the new year or Mother's Day. It is a place where women of all ethnic groups and backgrounds can come together to learn about the importance of taking care of their own health. "First, we had a hard time, but after a while, they loved the tea party," says Kimmy, her face beaming. Soon, women started bringing their husbands and children so they, too, could learn about women's health.

Kimmy's message is simple: a mammogram can help find problems with your breasts even before there are any signs or symptoms. After you turn 50, it's important to have a mammogram every one to two years, and the Ontario Breast Screening Program, which offers free mammograms to women 50 and older, is the best place to have it done.

While women can book their own mammograms without referrals from their doctors, Kimmy often books appointments for a group of women and then accompanies them to their mammograms. She prepares them by telling them what to wear (a two-piece outfit works best, as you have to remove your top) and what to expect and acts as translator, explaining what the technologists are saying.

After their appointments, the women travel to downtown Hamilton together, where Kimmy takes them on a tour of the city. Many women have never travelled beyond the market or the library, and Kimmy says she appreciates these trips as much as they do. "They tell me their stories, about their lives in Vietnam," she says. "I have a connection with a lot of women."

Even though Kimmy has taken many women to their mammogram appointments, when it was time for her first mammogram last year, at the age of 51, she decided to take the trip alone. Despite being friendly with the technologists at St. Joseph's Centre for Ambulatory Care, in Hamilton, Kimmy was still nervous when she first entered the x-ray room. "But I think, 'I help a lot of women have a mammogram, comfort them,'" she says. "I asked the technologist, 'I have small breasts, do I really need this,' and she said, 'Yes, sure,'" says Kimmy, giggling.

While she admits it was a bit uncomfortable -- she compares it to the pressure you feel from a blood pressure cuff -- and she was a bit sore afterward, it wasn't nearly as scary as she thought it'd be. It helped that two weeks later, she received a letter that her exam results were normal. Now that she's had a mammogram herself, it makes it easier to talk to other women about the procedure. "I say, 'I was scared like you, but now I know the feeling,'" she says.

After realizing how easy it was to have a mammogram, and how valuable it was, Kimmy talked to her doctor about taking other screening tests, such as the colorectal test she had this April, which checked for problems in her large intestine. Now that she's had the test herself, she encourages other women to have one, too.

Kimmy says it's all part of women taking charge of their own health, not just for themselves, but for their families, too -- something that is particularly important to her as a new grandmother. "I am lucky to have this job, to work for the women, to help the women," says Kimmy. "We need to take care of ourselves, to be a role model for other women to take care of themselves."