Now lie back and open wide.

As mentioned in my previous post, I wanted to sign up for a pap smear and my HPV vaccine and I did!

Here’s my account of the pap smear that I did.

I have never had a regular gynae before or even seen a gynae before so this experience was a bit of an eye-opener for me.

I went to a family clinic which was near my driving centre. (been walking past it so much that the clinic was the first I remembered after deciding to go for a pap smear.)

When I first found out that the doctor was a male, I was a bit concerned. Afterall in my opinion, if there is going to be a doc poking around my bits, shouldn’t it be a female?

I however did not want to search for any other clinics and quickly asked my girlfriends about their thoughts on a male doc and almost all came back positive! That made me feel better and I decided to go through it.

Basically I was asked to lie down on the table and to remove my underwear. A female nurse was there with me throughout. I was asked to lie back and be in the “giving birth” position and well… basically open wide. The doctor was very professional and “matter of fact” like which made it really less embarrassing.

A speculum after being applied with liberal amounts of KY Jelly (to ease insertion) was inserted into me. Truth to be told, it was a bit painful for me. I guess I was pretty tensed up. The nurse kept asking me to breathe in and to relax. There was a slight discomfort but the speculum had to be inserted deep to allow the doctor to obtain samples from the cervix.

After the speculum is inserted properly, a spatula (which reminds me of a plastic ice cream stick) and a brush (which reminded me of a mascara brush) was used to obtain samples. Gathering of samples did not hurt at all in this case. After everything was done, I noticed that there was blood on the brush. Weirdly there wasn’t any pain.

I did have a bit of light spotting after the whole pap smear but there was no discomfort after that. In fact, the whole pap smear happened so fast and the slight pain was really nothing at all.

The pap smear plus consultation costs about $40ish for me and I think it’s money well spent. All you need to do is go for a pap smear once every three years. If you ask me if I would do it again, I would. Why not?

If you can’t prevent (by going for a HPV vaccination), at least be aware. Going for regular pap smears can help reduce your risk of developing cervical cancer.

Do it! I’ll be going for my HPV Vaccination soon. (despite being super duper afraid of injections).

Feel free to ask questions here! Or share stories about your pap smears or hpv vaccinations. I would love to hear more from you guys!