Just popping up to share my experience of my first smear test and colposcopy in an attempt to calm any worries or encourage people to go.
First up - I had my first smear test in December 2020, at nearly 30. I'd been putting it off for years and, as I'd moved around a bit, never had a letter asking me to go. I have quite bad hypochondria/health anxiety and, as much as I knew it was important to go, I felt sick every time I thought aboutit and before i knew it, 5 years had passed.
Anyway, a couple of months ago I had some bleeding after sex (nothing really heavy, cleared up in a few hours, but it hadn't happened before) and so I bit the bullet and called the doctor. She booked me in for a smear.
The smear was done by a nurse and she was lovely (she actually went on to tell me that when she first met her husband and they were 'at it like rabbits' she had bleeding after sex frequently and it just kind of turned out to be from the actual bashing around in sex, nothing sinister). I pretty much burst into tears as soon as I went into the room but she was really soothing. Part of the worry of going for a smear after having put it off for so long was because I was worried the nurse would tell me off - she didn't, she just said 'make sure not to put it off again'. She used a small speculum and after a couple of false starts where she didn't quite get the angle right, it really wasn't very painful. The speculum pinches a bit and you're aware that something is...'opening' you up, but I didn't feel any scraping or really anything from when she was taking the sample. It was over really quickly.
I had to wait a while for my results and put it to the back of my mind. My results came back as positive for HPV and as showing signs of low grade dyskaryosis. I was a mess - coupled with the bleeding (that didn't happen again btw) I was convinced something terrible was wrong and it was all my fault for missing my smear etc. I was asked to go for a colposcopy - cue a month of worrying myself to death.
Colposcopy was last week and, despite working myself into a frenzy, it was again fine. There were three nurses in there with me and they were, again, all lovely. I had to put my legs in stirrups (which I found scary but was actually kind of comfy) and they then use the speculum - i actually found this more comfortable this time, despite being more scared. The nurse did warn that I might feel a bit of tingling where she was applying solutions to test the cells - I did feel tingling but it really didn't hurt. It took longer than the smear but again, really not that long. The nurses were talking to me and it was over quickly. The tests showed everything was normal and all I have to do now is go for a smear in a year.
Still haven't gotten to the bottom of that incident of bleeding, which is playing on my mind, but just wanted to share a positive experience!