HPV and Me (TMI) Part 2

/Continued

In the last post, I explained how cultural norms and scientific ignorance allowed me (and many of my generation) to fail to protect my fanny from epidemic HPV.

Come the mid 1980s, my fanny and I were living in a virtual heaven. We were in a long-term and monogamous relationship with a very nice johnson whom we later married and with whom we had children.

I always took care of my fanny (as she did me) by attending for Pap smear tests when summoned by my GP. It was in the late 80s that my fanny produced her first abnormal smear, and I had to take her for a colposcopy examination at the Elsie Inglis hospital (later sold off by Lothian Health Board). I'd not yet matured at this time into a serial protester, but I recall being distressed by and non-compliant with this clinic's factory-line ethos.

They insisted I should carry my knickers in a wire shopping basket in full public view from waiting room to doctor's consulting room to treatment room. When I refused, on the grounds that I preferred holding important conversations while wearing underclothes, I was laughed at. My fanny was refused a local anaesthetic before they biopsied and froze 'bad' areas of my cervix because 'the cervix has no nerve supply'. This was and is categorically untrue (why is cervical dilation during labour sore then?), and I've not had to endure such indignity or unnecessary pain during any subsequent cervical treatments.

A few years later my fanny was called back again after another dodgy smear result, but this time I was able to discuss the plan in a dignified setting, and my fanny received a local anaesthetic before diathermy (burning) of some new dysplastic areas.

All was rosy, and the treatments didn't hamper normal deliveries of two spanking kiddos. Brilliant! The johnson belonging to my husband took off for pastures new in 2000, and thereafter my fanny found her pleasures elsewhere, mostly in fairly long-lasting, serially monogamous relationships. The married johnson had been happy to use condoms, but I learned that the generation below mine seemed reluctant to do so. Who knows whether my poor fanny received a nasty HPV from one of these, or whether she'd been cooking pre-cancer from her teens.

This year, another bad smear result came back so I took my fanny up to the new hospital in June for more cervical pre-cancer treatment, this time by loop electrical excision procedure (LEEP). LEEP is a more invasive technique (shaving the cervix all over), but since I had a local and have finished child-bearing, thought no more of it.

In retrospect, my periods started going wrong afterwards. Lots of menstrual pain (never previously a problem for me), bleeding stopping then starting at odd times throughout my cycle. I put it down the the menopause (for which I'm rapidly heading), and tholed it like a Stakhanovite.

/To Be Continued