 Blogging instead of panicking
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May. 7th, 2009 @ 11:04 am 
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So, in about two hours, I'm due to have my first pap smear ever.
I'm 28 years old. I'm aware that once you're in your twenties you're supposed to have it done if you've ever been sexually active. I'm aware that my first experiences which put me in the category of needing this happened well over twenty years ago. (I'm not sure how to phrase that, because... it's not really "becoming sexually active", and yet I don't want to sidetrack on a discussion of That Kind Of Thing... Anyway.)
Last week I had to answer a doctor's question: "Well, I haven't had sex with a man since I was ten." His reaction was interesting - blink, process, okay, clear recognition of: "This is relevant information to the medical issue we are discussing, but she is clearly not wanting to discuss it, so I will take that as data and follow her lead in the subsequent discussion." Which was pretty cool, actually. (Same doctor did not suggest that my problems clearly required me losing weight; was more, "OK, this medical procedure, and this test, are the next steps, to rule out serious condition X.")
(The serious condition in question being cancer. It's unlikely, because I'm quite young for it, but possible, therefore investigation is needed.)
*breathes*
So here's the thing: Pap smears, to my knowledge, require the doctor accessing your cervix. Which involves a speculum and opening up my ladyparts for examination.
I have once had someone try to open my ladyparts with a speculum.
It was screaming agony for me. It felt like I was being torn apart, like the speculum was made of razors and was the size of a tree. It is the most pain I have ever experienced, ever - and I say this as a periodic migraine sufferer who's been hit by a car and occasionally been in the kind of pain that has me whimpering and writhing and sobbing as a result. I know from pain, and this? Was the worst. Fractured collarbone? Trivial. Second-degree burns? Hurty. Hitting the road badly enough that my tendons are visible to the naked eye? Not so bad. I have never experienced a pain so profound as that was.
Eventually, the attempt was abandoned, because it just wasn't going to work.
My psychologist assured me yesterday (as an older woman with much experience of the procedure) that the doctor doing it makes a difference. She, and the other two people I've talked about this with, reminded me that I can talk to the doctor first - explain this, ask for, I don't know, the smallest possible speculum and lots of lube and as much gentleness as possible. I know that the doctor I'm seeing today is likely to be extremely experienced - she's a doctor at the University medical centre, where many, many young women go and many, many pap smears are performed.
It's still kind of terrifying. I know it shouldn't be - as a small child, I forget why, I was once allowed to stay in the room while my mother had one performed. I watched (from a distance) with interest. My mother, calm, with an air of undertaking an irksome chore; the doctor, his expression one of clinical absorption, carefully doing arcane things to my mother's body. At the time, I knew what a vagina was called (though I thought of it as a fanny, I think), but all I really knew was that you could wee out of it and it had a more complicated shape than any other body parts.
It wasn't long before I discovered it had other uses, but that's another story entirely, and one I do not intend to tell in public in the near future.
After this ordeal I need to go do a Linguistics assignment, but currently, I can't concentrate on that kind of thing for all the inconvenient terror I have to distract myself from first.
Preparations I have made:
Showering this morning instead of last night. Cleaning my nethers with a thoroughness that borders on obsessive - twice. Carefully picking out my most presentable underpants. (Normally my underpants are seen by people not-me only when on the laundry rack, and I'm fairly confident my housemates scrutinise my underwear no more thoroughly than I do theirs: which is to say, not at all. It's the laundry rack; the only relevant question is whether there's stuff on it or not, and if so, whether that stuff is mine, and if so, whether that stuff is dry. Beyond that I have no need to discern detail.)
I'm thinking of asking the doctor if I can have my computer where I can see it while she does it, so I can concentrate on something else, because, no, really, I need distraction here or I'm only going to tense up from the memory of the worst pain ever.
I can do this, and I need to do this, because I do not want cancer. And I am well aware that if something in my body has gone a bit cancerous, the earlier it is identified and treated, the easier its extermination will be. (At this point, worst case scenario is, I think, the removal of my reproductive organs. I will be a little saddened by this, but I can live with that. Literally, possibly.)Current Mood:  nervous
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| Date: |
May 7th, 2009 05:40 am (UTC) |
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Good luck!
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