Hi everyone, I have been following this site for a few months now and it has been a great comfort to me (although I do find myself obsessing over it a lot). I just wanted to share my experience so far.
I went for my first smear in July 2023, a couple months after turning 25. 12 weeks later (October) the results came back as HPV and cell changes. No more information is given in Scotland so I spent a month being terrified of the worst, only to receive a letter exactly a month later saying that I was classed as a routine appointment. I knew from reading on here that that meant I was low grades. I then waited 16 WEEKS for a colposcopy in Glasgow, managed to push it all to the back of my mind for a while over Christmas thankfully.
10 days into January I received an appointment for colposcopy which I booked for the 22nd of Jan. I attended this appointment 2 days ago and was very nervous but found it fine really. The speculum going in was quite sore but once in, it was okay. They showed me my cervix on a screen which was very high def and strange. After the doctor applied the dye she said that she couldn’t see any changes and it looked like a healthy young persons cervix. She took a biopsy but she had told me she was planning to do this before the colonoscopy started so I think it was just to make sure. The biopsy was fine, it didn’t hurt at all really. She said I’d get my results in 8 weeks, more waiting yay!
I felt very relieved after this appointment which I had been building up for a long time. I’ve had no cramps or bleeding at all, just a bit of brown discharge from the cream they put on my cervix.
My issue is now that I’ve fallen down the hole again and I am worried that the results are going to come back as high grade CGIN (or worse) as they didn’t see anything on the smear. I’ve never had any symptoms of cervical cancer (bleeding etc) but I have had deep pain during sex for around 5 years which I presumed was endometriosis or something. Feel like my mind is in overdrive recently.
To make matters worse, I never got the HPV vaccine at school as my parents were anti vaxxers. They gave me the choice to get it if I wanted but told me loads of horror stories about it giving women fits and how it was crazy to give to young women as they aren’t sexually active. I know now that all this is nonsense and it’s given young so that HPV can be caught before anything develops but it’s too late. I am considering paying to get a dose of Gardasil 9 privately to protect against the other types. It would be great to know what type I have as if I knew it wasn’t 16 and 18 I would definitely get the vaccine. I am quite angry at my parents and when I try to talk to them about it they get very defensive. They are good people and I don’t want to be angry at them but I can’t help but feel I’ve been failed a little here.
I saw a news report on the BBC on the day of my colposcopy to say that there had been 0 cases of cervical cancer in Scotland in women who were fully vaccinated at a young age. I’m so happy that’s the case but it also felt like a punch in the gut as this so easily could have been prevented for me. I have bad health anxiety anyway and while this sounds like nothing to worry about, I can’t help but feel like I’ll be worrying most of my life that I might get cervical cancer.
). Happy that I’ve done that now despite the cost.
