Similar to this thread ‘Tampons Suck’. This morning at 11.30 I rock up to the Doc’s for the twice yearly nasty. I have already rescheduled it 4 times. Today, I take a big breath and decided to deal with it like a grownup. I tell myself it’s not that bad and that hundreds of women have them every day. My good friend is the practice manager at the clinic, and she asks if I’d like her to come in with me and talk to me whilst the smear is done by very qualified gyno. I ask her why she would ask that and she says “you’ve gone very white and you’re trembling”. I hadn’t noticed.
I accept her offer and by the time I get to the correct room, I can hardly stand, my legs are shaking so badly. I have a small and remote cervix, and it usually takes the doc ages to find it and then scrape it. This gyno is great, my friend is wonderful and I am undressed and on the cot and my friend is holding my hand and talking to me and the gyno is down at the business end and that’s when my knees lock and I start to cry and then … I threw up.
Apparently it was just an old fashioned anxiety attack. My GP came in and wrote me a script for a mild sedative. Sooooooo folks - next Tuesday, it’s 2 pills, lunch at the pub, several wines and then a pap smear (I’m sure to be relaxed by then). Oh, and why is it called a pap smear? Because if it was called a cunt scrape, no one would ever have one.
That said, ladies, don’t forget to get checked. Even if you do need a little help to relax.
Huh. Does it hurt getting yours done or something? Yeah I don’t LOVE my doctor sticking that metal thing inside me, then her industrial KY’ed fingers, and then squeezing my boobs, but it’s more of mild annoyance than anything.
Maybe some cognitive behavioral therapy or something could help?
It’s called a Pap Test or Smear after the guy who came up with the test and if we actually had to say his full name in order to get the test not many of us would be having them done.
I can sympathize, mine are usually yearly, but my yearly was done last month and was abnormal so I have to have a colposcopy next week. Last time this happened nothing abnormal was found but I had to have another smear after 6 months to be sure. So I am probably looking at having at least 3 total in the space of a year again and that’s the best case scenario. I get pretty anxious about them too but I haven’t thrown up … yet.
Oh yeah…first time I had one of those the doctor told me it would be like a menstral cramp! I almost tore her throat out. My clothes were wet through from sweat. So from then on(I’ve had three total) I insist that I get good drugs to put me out.
Mine have always kinda hurt, but not to the point of unbearable agony. I have since learned to take a Tylenol about an hour before the exam just to take the edge off.
It ain’t no fun, though, I will say that.
Gah, my first one put me off them for years - I wasn’t sexually active, just wanted the Pill for period control, but the Valkrye Gyno at the Campus Health Center didn’t believe me and used the large speculum, as I am a large girl. My blood pressure was 160 over I don’t know what, and I walked funny for 2 days afterward.
May your next gyno be a gentle person with soft, delicate hands. And offering sedatives.
I had one a few weeks ago - I’d gone to see the practice nurse for a check-up for contraceptives (they do a 6-monthly blood pressure check) and she asked me if I’d had a test recently 'cos I was due for one. The local health trust usually sends me a reminder letter but I’d not had one, so the nurse said she could do the test there and then. What fun. Not even time to prevaricate!
Anyway, I had it done but not without the usual trouble. She’s very impressed with the strength of my pelvic muscles…firing ping-pong balls across a room would so not be a problem. The results arrived on Saturday and apparently my test “appears normal”. I still have to go back next week for another blood pressure test because it’s higher than she’d like. That’s what you get for surprising the innocent patient with a Pap test!
Really? I have colposcopies once a year due to the need to monitor mild abnomalities, and while they’re not exactly fun, I’ve never found them that painful. YMMV, of course.
I have my fun little exam every year because i’m on the pill. I’ve been on the pill since i was 16 and i am now 23. I always wondered why the cold metal duck lips hurt until last year when the new gyno informed me that my little canal wasn’t as long as others because my cervix was prolapsed. :smack:
You would think that was something they would have told me, oh i dunno, 7 years ago!!! Its not a bad thing, i just cant take anything very long.
I had to have a colposcopy done too and they do lie. It doesn’t feel like a cramp, it feels like somebody stuck their hand up in there and scratched the hell out of your insides! I mean i could feel the scraping! Then i had to have a cryosurgery done. Cryosurgery - Wikipedia
That is even less pleasent. But next tuesday, i get to go again! Woohoo!
Sometimes women get something similar done at the gyno too, FWIW.
The pap test feels like a minor scraping in my case, like the dentist rubbed the inside of your cheek with a fingernail accidentally.
I know some of you find it highly stressful, but if you let it go for a while and then something develops in the meantime, I guarantee you that would be far worse to cope with.
Every female test seems designed to be as humiliating as possible. Ever had a pelvic ultrasound? Now there’s a fun one. :rolleyes: The last time I did that the tech assured me that men get theirs once they hit a certain age. IMO, it would take several probings a year for them to even get close to what women go through in a lifetime. Fuck pap smears and all of their evil, humiliating cousins.
Pelvic ultrasounds, yup. Pap smears, yup. Colposcopies . . .
I don’t fucking care if I have an abnormal pap smear. I am not getting another one of those unless I get Valium and Vicodin going in and have a friend to hold my hand and keep a gun pointed at the gyno’s head.
Other than the fact that I have an unusually deep vaginal vault and a retrograde cervix (it points at my spine and hides from the rest of the world), my vaginal muscles are fairly tight. So, what did the gyno do? She used her biggest speculum and went after me like she was trying to pry my pelvic bones apart.
I don’t necessarily want her dead, but I wouldn’t be overly upset if I heard she’d been devoured by wolves.
They’re unpleasant, but it’s such a relief when they’re over. The worst part for me is when they’re poking around to make sure everything feels normal. My ovaries are not designed to be squeezed that hard, I swear. I’m usually sore for a couple days after. (And strangely, I still feel more comfortable with a female gyno, when the easiest test I’ve ever had done was with a male doctor. Weird, huh?)
Well, guys can have their share of unpleasant tests. Back in college I went in for a barrage of STD tests, just to check, and I mentioned it to a male friend. He thought it was a good idea and went in, too. A few days later he says, in a stage whisper, “You didn’t say what they would do.” I asked what he was talking about, and he told me that one of the tests involved putting a q-tip inside the urethra and swirling it around to get a sample. :eek: I don’t remember anything like that, so if that happened to me, I must have blocked out the horror. squick
This is me as well. There’s just nothing quite as much fun as having a new GYN rummaging around in my innards looking for my damn cervix because it’s not where she’s expecting it to be. I’m deeply glad that the doctor who gave me my first one (at the tender age of 14 - because my Mom’s a little paranoid because her mother died of cancer that they suspect began as undiagnosed cervical cancer) told me where it was after he had his own rummage around so that I could pass the information on to others in the future.
Fortunately for me, I only have to have a Pap every other year, courtesy of having 15 consecutive come back clean.
My Pap tests are excruciating, and now I just found out I have polyps on my cervix that have to be removed. I don’t know yet what kind of procedure this is or what, if any, anesthetic I get? Oh, please . . .
My mother died of uterine cancer at 42 so I, too, am very apprehensive of this kind of stuff. I bleed easily.
My colposcopy appointment is next Tuesday as well. We can be stirrup buddies! :eek:
Er … nevermind, that sounds … weird.
I’m hoping it will turn out to be nothing, like the last time I had an abnormal Pap. I know I will need some serious druggage if I have to go to the next step after colposcopy. I don’t have HPV so my doctor says I am not a high risk but they still have to do all the followup stuff for the abnormal Paps.
Oh, and I also have to schedule a boob-squishing, too, more fun.