HPV+
That Time I Thought I Had Genital Warts
Back when I thought I was going to have sex again, I got myself STI tested. I hadn’t had sex in four and a half years, nor had I experienced symptoms for genital warts or anything else, but I always make every new partner get themselves tested before they can touch me. I always get tested, too.I hate condoms. I’m on the pill. Let’s just…
HPV Negative
Folks, I had good news. Great news, actually! After years of being HPV positive, I have finally tested HPV negative. I’m talking about the high-risk types of HPV here – the ones that cause cervical cancer, not the ones that cause genital warts, herpes, etc.
I Got High and Live-Blogged My Smear
I’ve been a right dickhead and ignored my smear for ages. I should’ve been on one-to-three yearly smears because I tested high-risk HPV-positive, had CIN3, then had to have LLETZ, but I’ve avoided it all for seven whole years. I’m an absolute dickhead, aren’t I? Queen of the dickheads. To be fair, when you’re as depressed as I was, avoiding cancer (and just taking care…
It’s a Colposcopy Kinda Thing
I had my colposcopy on Monday. Petrified wasn’t quite the word I would have used to describe it. What’s worse than petrified? Well, I was that. Double scared. After the LLETZ last time, I wasn’t looking forward to having it a second time around and I’d convinced myself it was going to happen. Plus that whole HPV positive thing really puts a dampener on things,…
HPV Positive
Well, it happened. I got some results. They weren’t good ones. HPV positive... plus some other stuff. For those of you who are new to the site I had my second ever smear just under a year ago, and it came back with high grade dyskaryosis. Following that I had a colposcopy and LLETZ to remove the cells with a follow-up in six months time.…
LLETZ + 6 Months
When I went for the smear, the nurse asked me what I had understood about my last lot of tests, examinations and procedures. My answer? Not very much. Everything I learned, I learned from Google and the women who had answered questions on my blog. At no point did anyone really explain to me what was going on. I wasn’t told what CIN meant. I…
Life After LLETZ: What They Don’t Tell You
Right, peeps, this post isn’t going to be a pretty one. It's about life after LLETZ, and you’re not going to want to read it - but you should. I’m going to tell you my story of what happened once I was diagnosed with High-Grade Dyskaryosis, before then having a colposcopy, and requiring a procedure called LLETZ — Large Loop Excision of the Transformation Zone.…
Smear for Smear: High Grade Dyskaryosis
So, it’s taken me a little while to write about this, mostly because it’s actually a pretty terrifying thing for any woman to go through. After already broaching the topic of cervical cancer and some pretty suspect symptoms along the way with a doctor, and being laughed out of the GP's office, I had put the thought of it all to the back of my…
Smear for Smear
So, I'd seen the #SmearForSmear campaign online, and I figured it was about time that I went and booked my smear test. Fast-forward a few weeks, I was sitting in the stirrups, trying not to fart with fear. "Wait two weeks for the results," the vagina-hunter told me. "If you've not been sent a letter in that time, give your GP a call." Less than…