Smear test - is it normal to find leaves and twigs?

I think you will find nurses that specialise in any specialty have to do extensive training in the subject. When I worked in Colposcopy we had practice nurses who came into observe what happens to women with positive smear tests.so they could relate it to their patients if necessary They are not just nurses so please don't be so condescending. I would advise any women who experience difficulties with a nurse at a GP clinic go to a well woman or GUM clinic instead.

It doesn't matter matter if you have only had sex with one man. If he had, had sex with another woman previous to you he could have picked up a HPV which can remain dormant for years and years. According to the consultant I worked for even nuns can get HPV! Maybe not all nuns are virgins when they take up their vows, who knows?

I’ve always gone and actually had my first smear as a teenager as they do that in the US before you go on the pill. At most they were slightly uncomfortable though you do feel rather vulnerable but it’s a necessity and it never occurred to me to not go. But my last at about age 60 was so painful even the nurse suggested that it be the last one (I haven’t been sexually active since my DH passed away 15 years ago). Unless I have some symptoms I’m never doing that again.

I appreciate this is all true and most cases of cervical cancer are caused by HPV. My concern is with the few who may fall through the cracks and develop cervical cancer without having HPV. I do feel this is corner cutting. I've also learned from this thread that you can do a HPV test at home, so sitting there legs akimbo for what many women find an embarrassing and uncomfortable test seems almost pointless if they aren't screening the sample fully.

@user1493379562 Well done to the consultant who admits it's 'mainly' caused by sex. The NHS should be doing more to get the message across that the virus can spread in other ways. Some women will be stopping smears because they think they can't get HPV, but we can all get it. I'm living proof.

Obs and Gyn consultants are truly horrible. Arrogant, belittling and (in one case) surprisingly ignorant.

Ask her. She's on this thread. Nobody really knows. Every figure is an estimate. I'm sure the practice nurse who bothered to participate in this thread - for no personal gain - won't have plucked the number out of thin air.

I had a traumatic experience with one in my twenties.

For everyone it's not just 'go! it's nothing!'

I am glad people are posting their experiences about pain and bad attitudes from HCPs as it has made me feel a lot less alone and like a freak.
Women sharing those personal experiences about pain are not putting off others from having smears. What is putting of women is the potential to be patronised by nurses and treated like they have something wrong with them for feeling pain. The blame is put on the woman laying on the table instead of the person at the foot of it.
Yet women on here are doing the same to each other. What happened to 'my body my choice'? It seems cervixes are fair game on here and everyone gets to have an opinion on everyone elses.
Making out like all women will eventually have cervical cancer one day and smear tests are what stop them. Scaring women into a test with a lie is not on either.
If lots of women are in pain then something about the procedure needs to change and there is nothing wrong with highlighting that.

I am trying to get you to understand what other women go through, but I am clearly flogging a dead horse. I 'pretended' nothing. I flagged the literal agony (no exaggeration) in strong terms deliberately, to highlight the need for better procedures during smears. My request for calm was a direct response to your hyberbole and the multiple exclamation marks you used. Did I use language such as 'dramatic scare story', 'smash a big fist through any good', accuse anyone of depriving children of their mother, or suggest that women should be silent about their pain? No. Did I use a single exclamation mark in my response to you? No.

And it's obvious you couldn't be bothered to read/digest my post properly, otherwise you'd have presumably taken in the fact that I was proposing something that would increase the number of smear tests taken, thereby decreasing instances of cervical cancer and subsequent deaths. It's hardly rocket science. But hey, you carry on invalidating other women's experiences, proposing that women's pain not be talked about, and trying to silence posters on this thread, if you really think that's a more effective way of getting more women to have smears. 🤷‍♀️

Also, I wasn't calling you 'Sandra', that wasn't the context at all. If you're going to carry on accusing other posters of all sorts, I suggest you at least do them the courtesy of reading their posts properly before jumping to react.

Yes it has nothing to do with corner cutting

It feels like they're doing less testing, but from what I've read, it's not actually for cost-cutting purposes - HPV primary testing is more sensitive, catching significantly more cases of pre-cancerous cells than traditional cytology alone, and allows detection earlier. Cell changes without HPV are no longer considered as high-risk for cancer. You're also much less likely to go on to develop cancer in the next 5 years after a negative HPV test, than you are in the 3 years after negative cytology.

I wonder if anyone is ever referred as a result of something visual? I have certainly never heard of it but I guess it's possible.

Some attitudes seem to be keeping silent about the pain, repeat the party line that it's totally painless for all to trick more women into making an uninformed decision!

Jade Goody had many many symptoms of cervical cancer. She chose not to attend an appointment advising her that further cells required removing. I'm not sure how over the years this has been morphed into a narrative that she never had a smear test in her life.

Jade's death was a tragedy and bought attention to cervical cancer. It should also have bought attention throughout the NHS about cervical screening, how it is handled, WHY people choose not to attend (and whether that is simply because they can't be bothered - I suspect not!) and making changes to manage the pain some women experience. Instead they chose to plaster a message around that it's painless, and leave women who experience severe pain and bleeding to feel they were just not tough enough/deformed down there.

She's making women realise that they're not alone if they find it agonising.

As for speaking to the nurse, don't make me laugh. I'm sure there are some who would actually care but there's even an HCP on this thread saying 'A few moments of being uncomfortable could save your life!' and minimising what some women go through. Surely she should be acknowledging that many women find it very painful and offering the benefit of her experience.

But these comments will stop women having smears and the result will be the same! An avoidable loss of life! So many horrible women on here calling cancer "dramatics"! It's not dramatics to the families picking up the pieces after a woman dies and leaves kids and a bereft husband and parents behind.

But the comments online aren't calm are they! Look at your awful use of words "women in literal agony" ? What have you achieved by posting such an extreme statement? Except terrifying women out of smears! You don't need to post extreme scare mongering. You write in your first comment that women are in literal agony for every smear test and then pretended to be level headed in your next paragraph? Too late you've already done the damage! My smears hurt but it's a few minutes and needs to be done and most women will cope just fine with it.

For those experiencing pain like I have, you speak to the nurse doing it! You don't go online and deliberately put other women off!
And don't make fake names up for me! You don't sound big or clever doing it!

This 1000%.

Such dramatics. As I’ve said above, Jade Goody had repeated smears. She said in an interview that she ignored one letter saying she needed yet more cells from her cervix removed - the fourth time she had been required to have this. This was then twisted to make it sounds like she never went for smears. She did. She was having severe symptoms for four years with bleeding and passing out from pain and repeatedly sought medical help and was fobbed off. All the while the cancer was growing. The sheer arrogance of the NHS to try to use her story as some sort of lesson for women who don’t have smear tests. It’s a textbook of failure.

This thread reminds me of threads where someone is talking about their awful mother and people pile in to say “at least you have a mother, mine has died”.

Quite clearly the op had good intentions starting this thread to encourage women who have never been, to go. I expect this thread has had the absolute opposite effect.

She wasn’t denying anyone’s experience. Or trying to silence women. She was telling us about her experience which is just as valid as anyone else’s.

bloody stupid title though op 😬

Women likely share that smears are painful because we mostly hear "don't be frightened to get smears, they're painless, you just need to relax"... like we're just being silly. It's very annoying.

I have attended every single smear test I've been invited to, and I have excellent pain tolerance and control of my breathing, but they are VERY painful for me. Yes they're worth doing, but women are allowed to share their experiences! Lying that they're painless for all women doesn't help. Sharing experiences and strategies for reducing pain does!

All of this, said so much more eloquently than I could

💛