Bless you, I can empathise with some of what you might be feeling right now. It's a scary time, I still remember when a GP said my cervix 'didn't look normal' just after she had inadvertently started it off bleeding profusely. Not a good day. She made an emergency 2 week appointment with my local gynae clinic. (If you are in the UK this is good practice and pretty standard.) I had no idea what to expect, but I imagined the worst and those two weeks were terrible. The letter confirming my appointment came pretty quickly, which was something at least.
What happens at your appointment will probably depend on you, your history and the policies of the hospital/clinic that you attend for your appointment. The doctor I saw wasn't a Consultant but she asked me lots of questions, took my history (again) and tried to reassure me. (I was really upset and I was quite convinced that I had cancer and wanted to get on with things and find out exactly what I was dealing with.) She did a physical examination, felt all around my abdomen & pelvis and then internally (vaginally). She was very gentle and it didn't hurt and there was also a nursing assistant present for this bit. She used a speculum to examine my cervix and took another smear test, she also 'clipped' a tiny biopsy off for testing. She took time, used loads of gel, was gentle and none of this hurt me at all. I did bleed a lot though, and she needed to use silver nitrate sticks to make that stop, which took a few goes and made us all a bit twitchy I think, but I stress this didn't hurt.
The doctor also said that she would have liked to do an ultrasound scan vaginally, but she was worried about making me bleed more, so she wouldn't do that at this appointment. (I've had one of these before - they are not the most dignifying of procedures - its yet another thing being stuck up your vagina that you wouldn't normally choose but but apart from masses of messy gel I found them uneventful. This kind of scan helps them visualise the cervix, uterus & ovaries and other pelvic organs, usually looking for cysts, polycystic ovaries, lumps etc. I had a big 20cm ovarian cyst when I had mine on a previous occasion - turned out to be benign.)
OK, so this next bit was what happened for me, but this doesn't mean this will be what you experience. You might have something entirely different happening to you and your cervix, and you might be referred back to your GP for 3 or 6 month' keeping an eye' kind of follow up or many other possibilities.
I asked her to be straight with me about what she saw/thought. She said that the previous Dr was correct. That my cervix didn't look 'normal' and that there was a strong likelihood that it was malignant (cancer) but that it didnt look like a large area and didn't appear to affect the top of my vagina. She stressed that this was not definitive, and that I would need other scans to clarify the detail. She told me that she was booking me in for an MRI scan of my abdomen & pelvis and a CT scan of my chest and I would receive another appointment to get the results of these from the Consultant within a couple of weeks.
This is exactly what happened. From seeing my GP to starting treatment took six weeks - they were brilliant but it was still the hardest part of the whole journey. Worrying about worst case scenarios, trying to stay off Google so I wouldn't scare myself half to death (and failing), not really being able to tell friends & colleagues what was going on because I didn't know myself, and dealing with appointments, scans & tonnes of new information. At the Consultant appointment when I got my formal diagnosis, they told me about Jo's Trust, which was a godsend. I lurked on it through all my treatment because it was so helpful to me and my husband.
It's the waiting combined with the not knowing that really does your head in I think, pretty much everyone feels this so be reassured that you are not alone and you are not going mad. It is of no matter whether you have a cancer diagnosis or get an early cell change 'wait & see' appointment, it's still bloody terrifying and how you feel about that is totally valid. The most important thing now is that your health is being taken seriously and the right people are going to be taking a good look at things, which is much better than ignoring the problem and hoping it will go away. (It won't.)
I hope you've got a friend or family member you can confide in whilst all the detail is being worked out, but in the meantime have a well intentioned and possibly useless virtual hug from me. Take care.
