WOMB RAIDER

This morning I went for my waay overdue smear and I’m ashamed that I’m ashamed to tell you why. I had, what I have been describing as, a pretty traumatic experience at my last gynaecological appointment in 2020. I’ve been using the Mirena Coil as contraception for most of my adult life and have talked it up to anyone who would listen as not only a fantastic thought-free contraceptive but also, NO PERIODS, hello? Yes, it’s uncomfortable to put in and have changed but it’s worth it for the FIVE years of protection. The last time I went to have a new one put in, I decided to vlog my experience. The idea was to encourage more women to go get their smear AND introduce them to the wonderful world of coils. It did not go quite as planned. I don’t make a habit of crying on the internet so fair warning but if you want to see the raw reaction to what went down, it’s available for your viewing pleasure.I still maintain that for the majority, a smear is uncomfortable and invasive at worst but it’s essential healthcare that should not be put off. Again, I know there are some women for whom this is not the case so do not feel I’m dismissing you, in fact I’m about to get real hypocritical. When I went to have my smear done and my coil removed - I’m nothing if not efficient - they could not find the coil. They even pulled out the internal ultrasound but it was not to be found. This had never happened to me before but the nurse said it was common and the strings had likely been displaced at my last smear. I just needed to pop to the hospital so they could ‘go in and get it’.That didn’t sound like a lot of fun but she said, ‘just take a couple of ibuprofen 20 minutes before your appointment and you should be fine.’Weeks later, I found myself on a park and ride bus to the hospital, having googled this procedure to death and feeling understandably nervous. I was arriving in plenty time to take the ibuprofen and wait to be called.. but they called me in early. I laugh now, thinking how concerned I was that the pills wouldn’t have time to take effect. How naive to believe they would have even touched the pain I was about to experience. I am not a weak person and beyond that I am such a people pleaser that I can put a brave face on just about anything. So when I tell you I was audibly wailing while they manually dilated my cervix enough to insert forceps to blindly grasp around my uterus, looking for the lost object. By the time they were done, I expected to be presented with a third child. I’ve thought a lot about that day in the time since. There were two women in that room with me and neither thought I should have been given so much as a topical anaesthetic. I wish I could go back and advocate for the woman I was but it’s certainly changed the woman I am today. I’m not sure if I did it because it was already so much pain that I wanted to get something out of it or if I wasn’t entirely in my right mind that day but I had another coil put in while I was there.Weeks later, my smear result came back positive for HPV - which my daughter thought was the same as HIV and so an unknown number of people have been given entirely inaccurate information about my health but that’s a story for another time. When you test positive for HPV, you need to come back for annual smears. It isn’t in and of itself a cause for concern and most people will carry it at some time in their lives but it is the primary cause of cervical cancer so they need to keep an eye on it. My mum screened cervical smears for 20 years so I grew up with the importance of this drilled in to me. You catch it early and you have your best chance of treating it. This brings me back to my shame. Remember when that nurse told me the reason the coil had gone missing was likely my smear? And remember how just popping to the hospital to go in and find it was actually HORRIFIC? Yeah, so didn’t go for those annual smears. I actually planned to have my husband have a vasectomy and my coil removed pretty rapidly but that hospital appointment was 4 days before we went in to national lockdown and I don’t know about you but I was a little distracted. So 5 years later, that’s done, the coil is no longer needed and I rock up at the doctors office, terrified that they will tell me it’s missing again but prepared and ready to get that very overdue smear ticked off the infinite to do list. The nurse I saw was so lovely. She said what had happened to me was barbaric and I could have cried then and there. What happened to me caused me to neglect my own health and carry shame about it for 5 years. Hopefully it will all be fine and no harm done but that nurse telling me what happened should not have happened allowed me to forgive myself for letting fear override what I knew I should be doing. I felt like a bad example to my daughter, I didn’t want to tell my Mum, I was scared. But I was scared because I - and so many women - was put in a position where I was expected to just accept a huge amount of pain. What I learned, and what I want you to take from this is that we can say no. Before I went in there today I was honestly not sure how confident I was in advocating for myself. I worried that if I were to be in the same situation again, I might just let them do it. I have a really hard time saying what I need and standing up to any kind of authority but I know now with absolute certainty that I was going to go to that hospital insisting on a complete spinal block. I know a man who is so afraid of the dentist that they put him to sleep for minor work to be done. I’m not saying he’s wrong, I’m saying men ask for what they need and they get it. If you can’t do it for yourself, take someone with you who will. Don’t allow fear to put off essential check ups like I did. Thankfully, she found the strings, whipped out the coil (ouch) and I’m sitting here with minor cramps and major relief. I don’t know how I feel about recommending the coil anymore. It’s still a fantastic option, apparently they can last for EIGHT years now and when they’re good, they’re really really good. But as with so many medical things, when something goes wrong, it’s scary. If I were 10 years younger and didn’t have to have annual smears, I’d probably still have another. Isn’t that insane? The worst pain I’ve ever experienced was to retreive this but I’d do it again? Is this what is is to be a woman? We’re so used to pain that we’d willingly put ourselves though it? I don’t know and I don’t have the energy to do those mental gymnastics today but it’s over for me. I’ll have my first regular periods just in time to start perimenopause so that will be interesting and something I’m sure we’ll talk more about here - excited?ALSO, one last thing. If you are terrified of having a smear, I mean you are just never going to go, get an at-home HPV test. The NHS no longer look at every single smear. If you don’t test positive for HPV, they don’t look at the cells under a microscope anymore. I’m not saying don’t go for your smear but if you are in that group who find it intolerable, get yourself an at home kit and have that be the minimum standard. At least then, if something comes up, you can go to the doctor and say ‘put me out! do what you need to do’ but you aren’t ignoring your reproductive health entirely. Whew! That was emotionally draining but something huge off my birthday bucket list and one step closer to starting my 40s in the best shape of my life inside and out. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mikhila.substack.com/subscribe