Received 'normal' results but...

Hello everyone,

First of all I must say that I think the ladies on this forum are all wonderful. The support you all give to each other is so uplifting and reading this forum has really helped me the past week.

I have my first ever smear test last Friday (I am 26 years old) which I paid to have done privately so I could get my results quickly (I have severe anxiety and depression and things like this just throw me) - they came on Wednesday and they said “endocervical and/or metaplastic cells present” and “patient report negative - no dyskaryotic cells seen”.

I know that this means that my results were normal. I checked with my best friend who is a GP and she confirmed that the report says nothing worth worrying about.

Despite seeing this in writing and having my friend confirm it, plus the doctor email me to also confirm that it was a normal result, I am now wondering how accurate the test is. Please do not judge me for what I am about to say… I became sexually active at 15 years old, and have had multiple partners - a lot of them. The exact number I’m not sure about (again please don’t judge) but I did not use condoms with the vast majority of them. STUPID behaviour I know, and I changed my ways a couple of years ago when I realised how shocked I was that an STI result came back clean… I am extremely lucky and I will still never forgive myself for my behaviour in the past, trust me. I am now in a long term monogamous relationship.

I have had symptoms of CC and I spent years convincing myself that I was dying and the reason I did not go for my smear when I was invited was that due to my past behaviour I deserved CC/death. Last week a good friend finally managed to convince me how ridiculous I was being, and that is why I went. Now the results are ‘normal’ I just think no way. I cannot have gotten away so lucky considering my past.

How accurate are the results? I feel like I should go for another one just to be sure in a few months’ time. I would not waste NHS time. I would pay for another private one.

Sorry for the essay but this honestly is the only place I have found where I’ve felt that I could write down my true feelings and not be judged in return.

Maybe you could explain your doctor that you have a higher risk due to multiple partners (no judging :) ) so you can have an hpv test done. If it's negative, you can forget about it by now! If it's positive, don't judge yourself! Some women get hpv having only one partner. So if it's positive, they will refer you to colposcopy. Even then, it does not mean you have dysplasia. Many people are positive at some point in their lives and never have a problem with it :)