Thing is Ive been lurking around this forum for a couple of years now, so let me as briefly as possible tell you my story.
In my country, you start your cervical screenings between 6-12 months af ter your first sexual encounter, and so, at the tender age of 21 I did. It’s also common around here to get a pap + colposcopy even if you are just going for a routine exam. My gynae found a small acetowhite lession but since it was small and the pap smear turned out to be just fine she told me yearly screening would be just fine.
Now let’s fast foward 2 yrs from then, my pap smears were normal, zero abnormalities, nada. But my doc saw that the lesion was getting bigger, so she sent me to a cervix specialist who’s supossed to be THE big deal, for further testing. He did a punch biopsy which showed LSIL/CIN1. I asked him to remove it but he said it was not necessary, that it would clear on its own but just in case I needed to come back every 6 months for check ups.
And so I did, and for 2 years I had normal paps even though the lesion was still there
UNTIL last October 15th. Everything went as usual until he said “I’m gonna take a few samples for a biopsy”. The colposcopy machine/instrument/thing was connected to the tv set of the doctor’s office, and since I’m in my senior year of medschool he showed me my cervix.
And it didn’t look like nice at all.
I left the doctor’s office crying, carrying a small flask with pieces of my cervix on it (I had to take it to the lab myself), and I spent a horrible amount of 3 weeks waiting for the biopsy result. And as I expected the result was CIN 3, although fortunately, my endocervix was clear, meaning I was not going to need a cone biopsy and I could go for the LEEP treatment. Which is going to be under general anesthesia, of course, because I fear general anesthesia like hell. And this year has been all about facing my deepest fears. Finals every week, my dad died, my CIN went from 1 to 3, and now of course, under general anesthesia. It’s just incredibly unfair.
Has any of you felt like the universe is just conspiring to how much more can you take before you finally lose it?
Has anyone told you that everything is gonna be fine and the first thing you came up with was “How do you f***in know? How do you know it’s not already cancer?”
And it’s just horrible, because I know from my med school training that since I was monitored closely and that CIN3 takes quite a couple of years to turn into invasive cancer that’s it shouldn’t be such a big deal. But it is!! I feel like a hypocrite, telling people at the hospital with serious stuff to calm down and take it easy when I can’t even face this with some dignity, let alone a positive attitude.
So in a nutshell I feel like crap. I’m getting my LLETZ in 7 days, just 2 weeks after I got my biopsy results.
Sorry to bore you with my not so short story, but this must be the first time I actually vented. And many of your stories have truly encouraged me and gave a ton of hope, so I couldn’t find a better place to cybernetically cry my eyes out than this forum
