To never have another smear test again.

[Whiskyinajar]

Today I went for my first smear test in a decade ....I've never found them easy and today was no exception. In fact today the smear test couldn't be done as I was in so much pain and it was so uncomfortable that the nurse could not even open the speculum. She did say that she could just about visualise my cervix and the visually it looked healthy.

I'm 55 and I've been through several smear tests, I've never found them easy. I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and I have vaginismus hence all smear tests being horrific..

I left the health centre today feeling a failure which I know isn't a logical feeling, I know I am not a failure and that the issue is psychosexual.

However in terms of risk factors I am low risk. I've only ever had two sexual partners and I am a non smoker and always have been.

I'm going to write to my GP and tell her I am opting out of further smear tests.

The nurse today said they would refer me to gynaecology as they may have more success. Tbh I will not allow anyone near me with a speculum ever again unless they sedate me first.

I'm also looking a self testing kits which the NHS don't recommend, however I know in North London there is a current study looking at self testing kits and that these are used successfully in parts of Europe.

Tempted to order one and just share the result with my GP.

Help! Anyone else been in this situation.

It would be great if the many options to possibly improve smears mentioned in this and similar threads could be more common knowledge. There is a lot of grin and bear it towards it, and false comparisons to men's prostate exams that doesn't exist in the UK (that's first screened through a blood test, much as some push for HPV urine tests as standard as already mentioned).

I've benefitted from having a polyp found during a smear test, but I can see why other women look at the balance of risks and benefits and their own experiences and choose not to so. I agree with others than lowering the risks like with HPV tests which it would be great if it was more common knowledge and available.

@BiBabbles

It would be great if the many options to possibly improve smears mentioned in this and similar threads could be more common knowledge. There is a lot of grin and bear it towards it, and false comparisons to men's prostate exams that doesn't exist in the UK (that's first screened through a blood test, much as some push for HPV urine tests as standard as already mentioned).

I've benefitted from having a polyp found during a smear test, but I can see why other women look at the balance of risks and benefits and their own experiences and choose not to so. I agree with others than lowering the risks like with HPV tests which it would be great if it was more common knowledge and available.

Agree. I wish this thread could be shared with every female MP/influential NHS decision maker/NICE as there isn’t enough recognition of the wrongness of the ‘grin and bear it’ approach and suffering women are experiencing. (Also, of an 1840s method still being practiced on women today).

There’s a whole other thread about taking hardcore addictive drugs to get through this.
That is shocking
And no one cares

Agree. I wish this thread could be shared with every female MP/influential NHS decision maker/NICE as there isn’t enough recognition of the wrongness of the ‘grin and bear it’ approach and suffering women are experiencing. (Also, of an 1840s method still being practiced on women today

members.parliament.uk/members/Commons

Nothing stopping you at least sending to your local MPs. If I have time later I will send to mine.

I had my last smear 4 years ago and the gp wasn't able to do it. Never had problems before but was definitely not my favourite thing. She referred me to gynae and it was done by a lovely female gynaecologist. It wasn't in a hospital setting but a local primary care building. I would have been late fifties. Would your GP prescribe you Valium to take beforehand as that could help.

The high proportion of false positive tests and unnecessary invasive hospital procedures puts me off ever having a smear test done again.

Agreed @JeanSpinneysSmallPleasures, but the key word there is informed

And that's the challenge, isn't it? The information is out there but many of us struggle to interpret and interrogate it.

We are generally also poor at assessing risk. A woman born after 1960 has a 0.5% risk of getting cervical cancer in her lifetime - that's minute.

And cervical cancer accounts for less than 1% of all cancers diagnosed. Of course, that's little comfort to the 3120 poor women who are diagnosed with cc every year.

So women need to be allowed to decide if they are willing to take that minute risk especially if they find smears excruciatingly painful or traumatic. We should not downplay the psychological impact of potentially unnecessary investigations and treatment.

Let's be less militant about screening and have more respectful discussion.

The figures in my post are from Cancer Research UK.

I do sympathise. I’m due a smear on Monday and dreading it. I’m post menopausal, never given birth and have atrophy/dryness issues.

[quote wonderstuff]@LangClegsInSpace you've got those statistics wrong, the smear isn't saving 850 lives, if 3200 new cervical cancer cases but 850 deaths the cervical screening may well be saving 3350 lives, the women who are diagnosed but don't die are the ones being picked up early by screening.

That's probably over simplistic because some of the women picked up may have other symptoms and some of the women who sadly died may have survived longer than they would have due to screening.

It is still correct that a kinder less invasive approach is needed and that the numbers are relatively small compared to the size of the screening program.

They found a cervical polyp last time I had a smear, a year later I finally had a gyne appointment where they tried to remove it under local anesthetic, which was horrible and failed, gynecologist said they used to only do the procedure under GA, but they now tried LA as some women could tolerate it. I can't understand now I'm reflecting why they would be injecting the cervix rather than doing an epidural? Anyway that wasn't an option and I'm having general anesthetic next week.

Apparently it's very unlikely to be cancerous, but they always operate just in case. Simultaneously nothing at all but potentially awful.

I didn't know about HPV testing. Interesting.

I really passionately feel we deserve better medical care than we get. I'm not sure if it's the NHS or medicine more widely.[/quote]
Yes, I think we both got the statistics wrong. You are correct that cervical screening does not prevent 850 deaths per year. Looking more carefully at CRUK's data:

There are 3152 cases over a period of two years (2015-17) - so 1576 cases per year.

There are 854 deaths over a (different) period of two years (2016-18) - so 427 deaths per year.

www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/statistics-by-cancer-type/cervical-cancer

And obviously the mistake I made was to look at the number of deaths, when I should have instead looked at the number of cases minus the number of deaths, to work out how many lives were saved. According to CRUK's data, cervical screening saves 1149 lives per year (not taking into account the 0.2% of cervical cancers which are not preventable).

But I'm not a statistician or a scientist, I'm just a normal woman looking at the data provided by CRUK on its public facing site. So if I've got my sums wrong again I would appreciate it if someone could provide the correct calculation, rather than just dismissing my posts as 'misinformation', as @Plutoh has done.

These are still very small numbers and I stand by everything else I have said in all my posts on this thread.

Why aren’t they making more of a fuss about cancers that are more prevalent
Why is this an NHS crusade
Interesting

You can ask to insert the speculum yourself - I did this at my last smear and it made it much easier. Just a tip for anyone who finds them difficult.

The number of women who have experienced sexual trauma plus the number of women who have vaginismus plus the number of women who have vaginal atrophy plus the number of women who have a tilted cervix plus the number of women who have had prior damage to their cervix and/or vagina because of previous medical treatment plus... is many times greater than 850 or 1149 or 3000+ whatever.

A hugely disproportionate number of women are harmed by the cervical screening programme. This doesn't mean we should all just not bother going for a smear, it means we should be demanding a much much better screening programme. Meanwhile no woman should be made to feel bad for being unable to face a smear test.

What I hate most is the propaganda that pushes the idea that access to women's vaginas is no big deal. All the campaigns I have seen assume that women do not attend for smears because they have forgotten or because they are embarrassed. There is no recognition of trauma. There is no recognition of post-menopausal vaginas.

If anyone's not sure what 'gender' means, this is a very good example (see image) In a sea of pink, women are offered no useful information, they're just guilt-tripped into submitting. For example, one of the prominent slogans reads, 'You'll wax your bikini line ... but you won't get a smear!'

Well, a) having a speculum inserted into your vagina is a helluva lot more invasive than having a bikini wax because a speculum goes inside your body (can't believe I'm having to spell this out); and b) there are a fuckton of women who remove parts or all of their pubic hair because they have been coerced into it by their partner who prefers it that way. For those women the message is, 'You'll submit to him so why won't you submit to us?'

I'm am woefully out of date with current gynaecological knowledge so I'm hijacking this thread to educate myself. So from what I'm reading they have identified HPV as a cause of cervical cancer. But what I'm confused about is just how high the percentage is? It seems you are all dying HPV is the main cause of cervical
Cancer. Is this the case? Can anyone point me to some recent information?

Here is an article about the major causes of death by age and sex:

www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/leading-death-dementia-heart-disease-13330775

It's a local news article but they say they've taken their data from PHE.

The first time cancer is mentioned as a cause of death is breast cancer in women aged 35-49. By ages 50-64 the major cause of death in women is lung cancer, followed by breast cancer, followed by heart disease. By ages 65-79 the major cause of death for women is again lung cancer, followed by 'chronic lower respiratory diseases' (I assume this means COPD, emphyema etc.), followed by heart disease.

We need better breast cancer screening for young women and we need better strategies to help women quit smoking. That would save far more women's lives than the current, nasty and coercive smear programme.

Weirdly I was Googling something else and this came up about prostitutes with syphilis.

These women were requested to submit to an internal medical examination. The inspection was described as “voluntary”, but police were known to coerce illiterate and underage women into agreeing to it. Later versions of the law made fortnightly inspection compulsory once a woman’s name had been added to an official register. Now identified as apart from – or even something less than – an ordinary woman, if she didn’t comply, she could be jailed.

This is from the 19th C. And then, women were blamed for syphilis.

wellcomecollection.org/articles/WsT4Ex8AAHruGfWl
Interesting article if nothing else

Is it a time and money saving exercise I wonder? That's the only reason I can think why they are still using traditional smear tests even if they are only testing for HPV in the first instance

My friend has vaginismus too OP and she had some awful experiences trying to have a smear test and had a really insensitive nurse who made it 10 times worse.

She got some medication from her GP to relax her muscles. I can't remember what exactly they gave her but it worked. Have a chat to your GP before opting out perhaps?

We need better breast cancer screening for young women

What evidence is there that BC screening for younger women would lead to better outcomes? From what I've read, it's the opposite - more over diagnosis and unnecessary treatment.

Give women better pay, better benefits, more maternity and employment protection, better childcare - if they choose to use it - and watch how that improves the health and well-being of women rather than trying to guilt them into screening.

I wasn't thinking of mammograms Sofa, I was thinking more about access to genetic counselling for younger women with family histories. Admittedly I don't know much about it, I was just surprised that breast cancer was the leading cause of death for women aged 35-49.

I would have thought it was clear from my posts on this thread that I have no interest in guilting anyone into any screening test.

I would have thought it was clear from my posts on this thread that I have no interest in guilting anyone into any screening test

That part wasn't aimed at you LangsClegg - I think our views are pretty much aligned. I forgot I'd NC'd - my other posts on here are as JeanSpinney...

I have always found smear tests to be absolute agony (probably due to being a victim of sexual assault, etc) and have tried lots of different things including the glass of wine which is suggested on some lists! I always go when I get the letter though because I always thought the treatment if necessary would be even worse. I had a smear last week and the nurse offered to use the smallest speculum and got me into a different position (clenched fists, under bum) and I couldn't believe it. Absolutely painfree! She was the oldest nurse at the practice, so may have just been more experienced and knew what would help.

@Rachellehenley really?