I’ve never had a smear test and I don’t want one either

[Seventeenstars]

Controversial I guess, I’m 36.
I don’t think it’s necessary, as I’ve read about my risk factors and I don’t meet the criteria. All the men I’ve slept with (without protection) were virgins and yes I know they were for sure.
I also have no family history of any cancer.
My partner has prostate cancer in both sides of his family, his dad has it currently and he’s not even been offered a screening test for this.
I find this so frustrating and contradictory when women and men are treated so differently and if you refuse smear or breast screening you’re seen as an awful person, and those who do are morally superior.
Men aren’t coerced into invasive internal examinations.
I have an aversion to having things inserted in me internally and feel I have a right to that decision regarding my body.
There are home tests for HPV available, which I have done myself in the past - all clear.
My question is why do they persist with this archaic procedure when there are other options available?

I keep getting phone calls from my GP surgery trying to persuade me to book a test. I don’t understand why they’re always pushing it, but just totally dismiss other medical issues, which has been my experience several times.
Do they get extra commission for this or something?
There are even pop up ‘clinics’ and drop in sessions going ahead near me.

Of course I know I’ll be bombarded with replies saying I’m selfish, stupid and uneducated. I’ve even read other women saying that those who refuse should be denied any medical care!
But I have done my research and I am more than aware of the implications.

DD is studying a healthcare related post grad degree in Liverpool. she attended a talk about health screening in one of the hospitals where she was doing a clinical placement.

Liverpool has one of the lowest screening uptakes in the UK and one of the lowest vaccination rates. As a result cervical cancer rates in Liverpool are significantly higher than the rest of the UK, and more children are contracting measles because of the low uptake of the MMR.

A PP said that encouraging people to take up screening was brainwashing. What utter nonsense. Do what you want, but please don't scaremonger other people to ignore screening.

I must say, I do find it amusing that people think OP is arrogant, awful, stupid, scaremongering, or bound to die, for essentially doing herself what Australia and New Zealand's health systems now do as standard for national cervical screening.

So, don’t have one 🤷🏼‍♀️ I don’t care either way…

It’s your decision, but they’re really not that bad to have done. I don’t have them now, but I find Mammograms more uncomfortable than smears.

Canada too. I was offered home testing kit option few months ago.

No-one ‘likes’ a smear test but I’m glad we have screening to check for potential cancer. Mine are always faffy as it points awkwardly (have to put hands under bum to tilt it) - but I’d never not go.
Also go for my mammograms - which I really hate.
You do you though, no-one can force tests on you, but if you get breast or cervucsl cancer, best of luck.

I do understand that. Mine are very painful and take 2 people to do. My cervix is around a bend and I have cervical ectropion so I bleed dreadfully for days afterwards.
But in my mind it’s still a minor inconvenience compared to the trauma of getting cancer and needing treatment.

I don’t think she has scaremongered anyone into not screening and she hasn’t ignored screening either. She has had an at home HPV test and the point of her post, which most people are missing, was to ask why the traditional test is still the only option when less invasive methods exist. The OP is autistic and finds the test difficult for sensory reasons.

There are many reasons why women don’t screen, from past trauma and pain to fear of the unknown and complex social reasons. From this month, women who have been unable to attend screening will begin to be be offered the option of an at home test on the NHS to increase accessibility. This would help people like the OP and the women in Liverpool that your daughter has mentioned to screen if they wish.

The OP has raised some valid points about accessibility for people who struggle with the test which have been misunderstood and she doesn’t deserve a lot of the judgement she has encountered.

https://eveappeal.org.uk/news/hpv-self-sampling-tests-will-now-be-available-for-those-who-havent-attended-cervical-screening/

To add: Lately DH (late 50s) went for a PSA blood test as a precaution- GP was happy to oblige - but he refused the digital exam. I was a bit annoyed saying women get poked about routinely and a finger up the bum isn’t actually that painful, but he still wimped out.

Agree. And the argument that husband hasn’t been called for prostate screening is bizarre.

I don’t think she has scaremongered anyone into not screening and she hasn’t ignored screening either.

@RisingVamp I was responding to another poster who claimed that we were being brainwashed into screening. I was on my phone and couldn't find that particular post. As a pp pointed out screening (and vaccinations) is cheaper for the NHS than treatment, which is why they do it. It has a cost benfit.

Yes exactly. There are some crazy posts on this thread and a lot of people who don't understand what they're being screened for. There are also a really implausible (statistically speaking) number of people who had pre cancerous cells and no HPV infection. These people would not now be treated at all as their cell samples would be discarded after their HPV test came back clear. I wonder if these represent a lot of false positives actually. It's one of the arguments for changing the way the tests are done.

The "I would be dead now" people are (thankfully!) very likely wrong. It's more likely that nothing would have developed and you'd have avoided an unnecessary medical procedure that weakened your cervix.

For some reason we are not allowed to question whether the NHS could change the way they do the screening without people getting hugely upset.

I would be dead - it was visual inspection on my smear that identified the tumour resulting in very swift treatment.
That tumour required a full hysterectomy including ovaries whilst pregnant with my second child and subsequent treatment.
Visual inspection contributes to the efficacy of a smear.
Each to their own, but I do feel that the comments regarding moral superiority on one side and brainwashing on the other are inappropriate.
If women decide against smears then fine, you do you but please don’t try and convince others that these screening checks aren’t important or that they don’t save lives.

Debate! In a free society we are allowed to have open debate!

Absolutely.

The discussions that will happen as and when proposals to move to a more NZ and Australia like system are raised will be very interesting. And have to be handled carefully, if the discussion on threads like this is anything to go by.

I agree no need for rudeness on either side. I think it's fine to debate things and I find the rush to shut up the OP (not from you) really irritating.

The visual abnormality side is interesting I can't seem to find any data on how often this is relevant. Does anyone know if the countries (like Australia) who do non-invasive HPV tests have seen any cancer uptick? If you were also positive for HPV (which is true for more than 99% of cervical cancers) then you wouldn't be dead under the system OP is suggesting we should use. You would have been called in after the positive HPV. Thank goodness!

I no longer want smear tests since the NHS stopped testing all samples for abnormal cells. They now only test for HPV and then test for abnormal cells if you have it. I have had HPV but now test negative so my last sample wasn’t submitted for further testing. I’m not going to put myself through a smear again for nothing (and, yes, I did inform the nurse I’d had HPV).

It’s your body, you can choose but you can’t be angry because doctors encourage screening. I had abormal cells removed from my first one at 27. My former colleague passed away at 36 from cervical cancer. I would never not have it done, even though I despise the procedure and have a lot of trauma from birth. I still acknowledge its importance.

@MithralI would have been called in from the HPV, yes. The visual abnormality expedited the situation.

Obviously, I haven’t needed a smear in quite some time now - I had quite enough people up there while I was being treated!

The one problem I can see with these self tests is accuracy of the testing. I’ll be honest, I don’t know the process fully but my brief understanding is that it still requires cells from the cervix via a brush type thing. Are women going to be ‘brushing’ the right bit or just have a poke around and think that’s okay? I’m sure that many will go to great lengths to do it properly (no puns!) but, for me, I would prefer a medical professional to do that kind of poking about to try and ensure that it’s done as appropriately as possible. Personal choice, I get that. It just makes me think of the issues with contraception - very highly effective if used properly, but stats indicate it isn’t used properly.

The test also doesn’t get round the ‘not wanting foreign bodies up there’ argument. Yes, brush much smaller and less invasive than a speculum but leads me back to my worries on inaccuracy. If a woman is distressed, worried, uncomfortable etc, are they going to take the necessary time and care to get it in the ‘right’ place?

From a place of experience, I have been there and believe me, it’s shit. I would take a speculum up the chuff every day for the rest of my life to have not experienced what I did. I’m incredibly grateful to be here with my half a vadge and no periods, but I would have it way different if I could.

OP: “I don’t think it’s necessary, as I’ve read about my risk factors and I don’t meet the criteria. All the men I’ve slept with (without protection) were virgins and yes I know they were for sure …

if you refuse smear or breast screening you’re seen as an awful person, and those who do are morally superior.”

Whilst Op might not want one, they do save lives, as many in this thread have said.

I don’t think anyone thinks they are morally superior or has said as much - but some have acknowledged that having a smear has led to a life-saving diagnosis and treatment. So they are grateful.

OP has had a fairly robust tone, others have replied similarly.

Personally I would trust the more professional research (NHS etc) over my own, and I would trust a medical professional more than myself do to the test. We’re all different.

OP can do what she wants - aren’t we lucky to live in a free country. I’ll take the smear tests, the mammograms and everything else offered.

On reading again, I think I misunderstood you as saying the OP had scaremongered when you meant the PP. Apologies on that point.

The figure of 3300 diagnoses per year in the UK comes from CRUKs data. You can check it here if you want to:
Cervical cancer statistics | Cancer Research UK https://share.google/UM1dG5uemj81KzWMx

The conversation on this topic started with one woman expressing her thoughts on the UK screening programme. All through the thread we've been talking about the UK. A chatGPT response posted up thead was deemed too American to be relevant to this discussion. So I am continuing focusing on UK women. If you want to talk about global cervical cancer screening maybe start a different thread.

There are finite resources available. The NHS budget is insufficient to our needs. Descisions need to be made about how best to spend money on individual screening programmes to ensure value. Value being both financial and in terms of health outcomes over time. While on a human level, I'm certain we'd all agree that each life matters, that way of thinking would paralise competent decision making on an organisational level for delivering national health care on a budget.

In an ideal situation money wouldn't come into it. But it does. To say otherwise would be naive. Consider a potential situation where the NHS continued spending money to screen for those 10 non HPV cancers a year, but then had to withdraw funding for an expensive cancer drug in order to balance their books. Which choice is better?

Yup and it’s clear to me that many people on this post don’t even realise!

There've been a number of posts that went way beyond 'replying similarly'. Fair enough if you don't want to read the whole thread to see them, but aside from the usual personal insults about stupidity (which OP hasn't done) some have crossed the barrier into fucking disgraceful. I've counted at least two nasty permutations of 'but you had a dick up there'. Quite why some of these posters felt it appropriate to reply as they did isn't clear, but they evidently considered she deserved it.

To the poster who asked if Australia was seeing an uptick increase in cervical cancer rates now they went to self testing and bypassed the nurses visual inspection: I can't answer for Australia, but Dutch and Finnish women have had the self test option for far longer, and their rates of cervical cancer and deaths from, are among the lowest in the world. They offer less screens too, starting at 30, and assuming you are negative you would have only about 5_6 self screens over your lifetime