Well today, I had my first pap smear. In the spirit of what I want the internet to be (a bank of peculiar and irreverent truths) I’ve decided to write about it. Let me tell you, it’s not like anything anyone tells you it is and this very account will probably differ vastly from anyone else’s. Now I don’t want to be one to immediately join the board of the ‘initiated’ by righteously giving out advice but… Good God, get a woman to do it. Now I’m as straight-forward and gender-neutral as any modern woman but it is, quite frankly, not a man’s job. Just like feminism, a guy won’t get it and the last thing you need is less empathy in handling such a procedure. Fortunately for me, I don’t think I could have found a nurse more professional and appropriately cheerful. The kind of nurse that I could imagine saving lives while simultaneously providing charming repartée in a military hospital in World War II, I liked her no-nonsense approach and gentle manner.
Anyway, I will get to the point. Supposedly they have to find something called the transformation zone. While it sounds like some esoteric erogenous area they may have found in the seventies, it’s actually the place all the cancerous cells hang out. According to the nurse, if you’re lucky, it sits square in the middle of the donut shape that the speculum opens up. For the rest of us, it may be anywhere east, west, north or south of the speculum opening. In any case this is the part they have to take the ‘swab’ from.
It doesn’t go in slowly. I guess it’s better that it’s fast, so you can’t change your mind about it. It’s an ouchie. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. There’s no point going in thinking it’s like inserting a tampon because it isn’t. The speculum goes in on its side, it’s moved 90 degrees and then opened up. That’s another ouchie. Then while its open, a funny long, thin stick not unlike a mascara wand goes in. The brush bristles are short and hard. Getting probed by that feels strange. Really strange and sort of ouchie. It made me aware of an internal part of my body that I didn’t know existed. It comes out with blood on it.
I guess when they talk about getting ‘cells’, they mean blood cells.
Anyway that’s about it. It’s not so much the pain but the weird intimate violation that made me walk out with my legs closed tight together.
The whole procedure left me cursing that I was born as another unfortunate member of the weaker sex. But it mustn’t have been too bad, because I felt better after a cheese and spinach roll, a cuddle and some red wine.
Listening to the new White Stripes album Icky Thump, I think it’s okay. It’s just like how I’d imagine Meg White to be; sweet, simple and slightly weird. It’s easy-rock listening.