One pesky item has been sitting on my daily to-do list since November of 2007 and no matter how much time I have during a given day, I just never get around to crossing it off. Get thee to a radiology clinic, it says, and get thee your annual mammogram -- you're more than two years overdue.

Mammogram, mammogram, mammogram -- the word has haunted me during my waking and even sleeping hours through a month of Sundays. Just do it, will you?! What are you waiting for?

Tomorrow, I always tell myself, tomorrow I will call the clinic and make an appointment and, by golly, I will not cancel this time, I will not be a naughty 21st-century woman and refuse to take my medicine; I will submit myself to this all-important diagnostic test that the medical establishment says is de rigueur every single year from the age of 40 until death.

But I just absolutely 100% do not want to do it -- I do not want to squish or squash or mash that soft tissue between the two cold, hard glass plates of the mammogram behemoth, exposing them to who knows how much radiation every 12 months in the off chance some bad cells may have grown in there.

It's a quandary we American women face every annum: Am I protecting myself by having a yearly mammogram or by refusing to have a yearly mammogram? That is the question.

I'm trying not to make the decision to delay strictly on my own -- I'm listening closely to my body, which seems to be hoisting a red flag and begging me not to expose it to so much radiation so often, just because the doctor says so.

My body -- if I'm hearing it right -- seems to be telling me that it is strong and healthy, thank you very much, and that it prefers not to blindly heed the subtle and not-so-subtle message that without an annual mammogram I'm going to die of breast cancer. Soon.

It makes me want to have a temper tantrum, right there in my gynecologist's examining room.

It's not that I refuse to do any mammograms at all; it's just that I intuitively feel that once a year is too much. I am no physician or oncologist but a recent British study would seem to confirm my personal hunch -- British women have just one every three years, in contrast to the annual-test guidelines put out by the American Cancer Society which my gynecologist insists I follow.

Yes, my doctor is exasperated but sometimes we regular people have to push back on medical prescriptions and make some decisions on our own, mustering the guts to accept any risk ourselves that we could be wrong. But I would rather be wrong in refusing the annual test than buy into the anxiety that overly frequent diagnostic tests can create, including the exhortation to do a self-examination every month.

I would argue that this obsessive testing can create a fear of something we most likely will never get. When we're spending too much time setting up appointments for mammograms or marking calendars for monthly self-exams, we let a fear seep into our life -- as I've seen in myself and many other women -- that can sap the everyday joy of just feeling healthy and alive.

And what about the many women who are subjected to painful and often unnecessary procedures to confirm that a spot on the x-ray is not a killer tumor but just tissue that was pinched during the compression process? Once the smallest abnormality is detected, we have no choice but to pass through the medical gauntlet to the next battery of tests.

As that British study pointed out, most women undergo that stress and anxiety for nothing. Or they receive intensive treatment for a tumor that was so slow-growing that it might never have become lethal. But because it was seen to be there, and its true nature is not known, it must be attacked and eliminated.

(Men have a similar quandary with the PSA test, which often picks up prostate cancers that would never kill them. But the treatment ruins their life. My husband's doctor advised him not to do the PSA.)

Of course, there are plenty of disagreements among experts and laypeople as to when women should start having mammograms, how frequently they should have them and whether, in some cases, women should have them all.

I know that mammograms can save lives -- that early detection can lead to effective treatment and a positive outcome, especially for women with clear risk factors. I have friends and family members who have benefitted from early detection and treatment and lived to tell the tale.

But I do believe -- as did the oncologist Bernie Siegel in his book "Love, Medicine and Miracles" -- that in some cases the healthiest people are those who resist the siren call of the medical establishment, which often applies a one-size-fits-all approach to diagnosis and treatment.

I would further argue that some breast cancer awareness activities have caused women to ignore far greater risks for heart disease and other illnesses. According to an American Public Health Association survey, twice as many women fear breast cancer over heart disease, although heart disease and even lung cancer are more likely to kill us.

So, for now, I've stopped hectoring myself with that "get mammogram" item and scratched it off my daily to-do list -- I'll revisit the question next November when three years will have passed since my last one.

You may agree or disagree -- what is your mammogram strategy? Should we all be getting an annual mammogram or can we/should we wait? Anyone want to set me straight on this?