I went for my cervical smear test today, and I have to say, no matter how often I have that speculum shoved up where the sun doesn’t shine, I still always feel like I’ve been ten rounds with Mike Tyson. I already had the obligatory hot bath, so now I’m off to find some non-fat cheesecake to make me feel better.
What do you guys do to get over the dreaded gyno check-up?
azteclady
January 28
6:40 pm
Close my eyes and NOT think of England…
*hug*
MB (Leah)
January 28
6:45 pm
Go home and take a shower. I hate all that goo that’s left over that I can never totally get off of me in the office.
Jade James
January 28
7:02 pm
It is very painful for me when I have to get it done. I wait till the last possible moment.
But I go home and take a hot shower. Then I make my hubby go to Burger King and get me a Whopper with the works.
After devouring it, I get a sense of peace again.
Kayleigh Jamison
January 28
7:05 pm
I concur with you and the other gals. Cleansing ritual and comfort food. There isn’t much else that can be done at that point.
Katrina Strauss
January 28
7:30 pm
I just kind of block it all out. Though as far as dealing with the actual process, the nurses at one of my former male OB/GYN’s slapped a poster of Patrick Swayze on the ceiling above the exam table. Those puppy dog brown eyes and that outdated mullet got me through a particularly painful procedure.
Kay Webb Harrison
January 28
7:35 pm
I stop at my favorite UBS, which is on the way home, and spend time looking for comfort reads; then I pick up lunch at a Subway (sanwich shop) that is near the UBS. Then I go home to eat, read and rest.
Kay (SE VA, USA)
Eve Vaughn
January 28
7:41 pm
I used to feel that way, but then I switched doctors. It’s quick and painless and my doctor has such a great bedside manner she puts me at ease which is no small feat considering there’s someone examining my stuff.
The very first time I ever had a pap smear done, the doctor was so old, I thought he was going to die. He was breathing really hard and it sounded like his heart was giving out on him. He told me to relax because he’d been a doctor since world war II and had served in WWI
Uh, not only did it not make me relax it only reaffirmed my belief he would die right then and there. To top that off he paid a little too much attention to my nipples. And since he was probably going blind, his face was only inches away from my breasts and he breathed his hot, stank old man’s breath on my body. I was so traumatized.
I had an Ace Ventura moment. Remember that scene when he jumps into the shower after he finds out the police chief used to be a man? Yeah, that’s exactly what I did after that exam.
Shelia
January 28
7:43 pm
Looks like we all do similiar things…a nice long bath and a good meal does the trick.
Shiloh Walker
January 28
8:16 pm
I … uh…pretend denial and that it never happens and then I whimper afterwards and try to avoid hearing anything else about it until I’m forced to do it again.
you’re intruding on my denial, Karen. 🙁
Jennifer McKenzie
January 28
10:03 pm
Yep, I hate them. AND I’m tilted (cause I know you wanted to know) and so they usually get the wrong place first time. I get double tortured.
Hope you feel better very soon.
GrowlyCub
January 28
10:05 pm
I guess I’m a freak. I have no problem with the exam. My biggest issue right now is that my gyn decided it was time for her to teach the up and coming gyns and now I have to find somebody else and I’m a lazy bum so that’s work and it makes me grumpy. 🙂
Grrrly
January 28
10:10 pm
well, i ride my 21-speed just about everywhere, so i’ve got the cycler chick’s cooch o’steel. *lol* if it was a particularly sensitive day though, i bus it home, do some yoga, and cuddle up with the kitties and a good movie.
Marissa Scott
January 28
10:40 pm
Well, since I have had a hysterectomy, I don’t have to have a Pap until I’m 40 (3 more years!)… but when I did have to have the nasty buggers, I would go home and shower (that gel stuff is just disgusting) then treat myself to ice cream or some kind of dessert. It’s a very traumatizing ordeal. Truly. ((HUGS))
kristenmary
January 28
10:55 pm
One of my favorite stories I once read was about a gal who had to do that visit. In the morning she had rushed around to get the children out of the house and off to school. Her daughter had been playing with glitter and she told her to wash up before going to school. The little girl washed up her glittery hands with a washcloth then left it sitting on the bathroom sink. The gal later, after having succeeded in getting the kids to school, remembers she has the annual poke-and-grope appointment and its in 15 minutes, across town. She runs into the bathroom, grabs the washcloth to give a quick once over, and rushes to the doctor. During the exam the doctor mentions how she didn’t really need to decorate for the exam. Of course the gal has no idea what he is talking about until she gets home and later discovers the glitter in the washcloth. So now everytime I have to go I think, well, at least I don’t have glitter all over me. Then I go home, take a shower, and grab a comfort read in my jammies.
December Quinn/Stacia Kane
January 28
10:59 pm
Hey Kristenmary:
http://gawker.com/news/legends-of-the-ladyflower/cosmo-prints-tall-tale-a-sparkly-gyno-surprise-260628.php
Make sure you read all the comments, they’re hysterical.
I’m another one who doesn’t care much about the exam, although it is worse in the UK where you have to lay down flat and bend your knees. I miss being able to sit up a little and have stirrups.
Kim
January 28
11:10 pm
Myself, I like an Alpha Male Gyno. He doesnt send his nurse in to tell you to undress….He stalks in the room himself and orders you to strip…..slowly. He then demands that you put your feet in the stirrups… then he ties them down.
I saw this somewhere and I loved it! Pretty much sums it up for me.
Erin
January 28
11:16 pm
My friends and I actually had a discussion on this recently. Whenever I go in they use something to scrape cells, and it’s uncomfortable. My friends looked at me like I was nuts and said that doesn’t happen to them. ???? Gynos are the worst. Actually I’m five years past due!
veinglory
January 28
11:49 pm
I look for a good, preferably female doctor. I.e. go in wearing skirt, sit on table, pull down panties, whole thing over in two minutes using a tool the size of a pencil which I barely notice. As with anything down there I think it is a matter of technique. Serious, any place that suggest paper gowns, stirrups, huge metallic devices or any of that and I am *gone*.
Michelle
January 29
2:19 am
As someone on the other end (Family Practice) one of the biggest tips is to make sure you slide down far enough on the table till your butt is almost falling off the table-it helps to tilt your pelvis.
I also like the disposable plastic, small sized speculums. Our office manager has a thing for John Travolta and she joked she was going to get posters to put on the ceiling but I have restrained her.
You know there are people who are paid to allow medical students to practice paps on them-I am not sure how much they were paid but I can’t imagine doing that for a living. Also during that they wanted the men to just get in the postion on the table with feet in the stirrups just to see what it was like (fully clothed) and a lot of the wusses refused.
I remember my first pap, afterwards I swore a vow of lifelong celibacy. I was sore for about 3 days and I had even gone to a female gyn.
Stupidest thing to say during a pap/breast exam-“just relax”. Once had an idiot physician ask me during a breast exam does this make you nervous? No I just love to have strange men fondle my breasts-idiot.
Jackie L.
January 29
3:30 am
My best friend does my Pap smears (we’re both docs) and she is so mean, crude, rude and disgusting, that her staff closes the office and they leave the premises. Guess one year somebody heard some of the stuff she says through the door and was totally traumatized.
I look forward to my Pap all year, ’cause I know it’s gonna be an experience.
In the dim past, they let us use Q-tips(TM) and I could sneak up on you, you didn’t even know I was doing a Pap. Now, we have to use little bottle brush thingies that are totally gross.
Worst thing that ever happened to me, a male doc did a hymenotomy (my hymen was very tough, apparently) on me, without warning and without anesthesia. When I objected at the top of my tiny lungs, he told me, “There are no nerve endings down there.” Wonder where he went to med school.
But my very last male gyn came into the room when I was up in the stirrups, slid his head under the sheet covering my knees and addressed all his remarks to my labia–the folds covering the opening of the vagina. I was only 19 and an idiot, but I told him, “My muff may have lips, but it’s not gonna answer you.”
kis
January 29
5:07 am
I always try to get in with someone I won’t have to see again–visiting resident or whatever–because if they’re even remotely good-looking, male or female, I always find myself oddly attracted to them afterward, and I end up acting all weird on subsequent visits. There was this one guy, jeez, I had to switch clinics…
Adding a nurse to chaperone just makes it weirder.
I can’t be the only one.
Jaynie
January 29
5:37 am
ick.
shower, chocolate, and hubby hugs.
Failing those three things, I open a bottle of wine.
Annmarie
January 29
5:55 am
When I was really young I went to the ob/gyn that had delivered ME… My best friend went to him too… She went during Halloween and he had on devil horns…When she looked down thats what she saw between her legs! She told me she told him to take the f ing things off… He told her she should have been there at Xmas when he wore his Santa hat…
Sunny Lyn
January 29
7:22 am
Love the new place, Karen. 🙂
Now this is a subject I never expected to see on a blog – lol. Bleh – gyno. A vente mocha or frap on the way home, cheesecake if possible, and a hot shower once I’m back safe and sound where nobody can poke or prod.
Gwen
January 29
9:58 pm
Chocolate, a hot shower, and margaritas, not necessarily in that order.
Plus, I employ Shi’s Denial Technique until just before tne visit and begin again immediately after my first sip of a ‘rita.
Randi Thompson
January 29
11:33 pm
My first ever pap was a woman and it was so traumatic that I didn’t get another one for nearly 7 years. I cried and she treated me like I was a pap-dummy (possibly a technical term for dummys used for OB/GYNs-in-training to practice on). In addition, I am very small and I always need them to use the pediatric speculum, but even that hurts. Generally, they don’t believe me until I start screaming. Then they catch on. I have to say though, no offense to the female docs on this page, but I don’t like female OB/GYN’s. They have a tendency to not listen to me, not look at me, and treat me like a cadaver (in that they can poke and prod with no tenderness). On the other hand, every male OB/GYN has been fantastic.
Erin-I’m 2 years overdo. I hate hate hate going.
Anyone know a good OB/GYN in philly? Who is actually taking new clients?
Indida
January 30
2:46 am
I cried everytime.
Right now I am in the process of avoiding it. I’m not sexually active but I need pills for cramps and birth control to lessen my cycle. I don’t feel that I really need the yearly at this point.
My mom’s doctor is a pill pusher. I went to see him and told him that I don’t want to go the gyno anymore because it is a terrible experience for me and he renewed my prescriptions. No questions asked.
I like him!
Miki S
January 30
4:40 am
I don’t love these visits, but they don’t traumatize me (any more) either.
I always take a day off, schedule this for first thing. So I can look forward to enjoying a day off from work when it’s over.
One of my first though? Guy idiot doctor. Kept calling my cervix a doughnut. “Gotta get a scraping from the inside of the doughnut and the outside of the doughnut.” THEN he turned the speculum (adult sized, by the way) 90 degrees – WHILE IT WAS STILL INSIDE ME!
I almost stood up in those d@mned stirrups and kicked him in the head!
kristenmary
January 30
7:23 pm
Wow. I had no idea the glitter story was an urban legend. I think I read it in Reader’s Digest of all things. Anyhoo….
One of the benefits of childbirth, besides the cute little baby, is that my husband now has a greater understanding of the whole process and why I dread it. He went to almost all of my appointments during the pregnancy and was present for the 2 day labor when every nurse or doctor in the hospital at some point had their hand up my hoo-ha. They were trying to get the action going by putting a gel on my cervix. Holy cow does that hurt.
Karen Scott
January 30
7:37 pm
Lol!
I hate the scraping, I lalways, always bleed, and that makes me feel ten times worse. What it is to be a woman huh?
Angelia Sparrow
February 4
4:58 am
I was caught up in work when you posted this, so I apologize for the late response.
I’ve had four kids. We’re talking the Holland Tunnel. But paps never bothered me, ever. I’ve had good ob/gyns and family drs and bad ones.
My current one is a little Lebanese man with a wicked sense of humor and a very light touch. I have to go every six months since I have squamous cells, which are basically pre-cancerous.
Ladies who are avoiding it: get your paps done.
I put it off for 3 years during insurance and moving chaos. Only to come back to abnormal cells and a lovely procedure called a LEEP.
If you think the paps are bad, trust me the LEEP is worse, and a hysterectomy is an overnight hospital stay.