Cervical Cancer - Stop Look Listen

Hi, and welcome to Stop Look Listen. And today I want to focus on cervical cancer and smear tests.

So, within the UK, it’s estimated that roughly 4,000 lives are saved each year by people having smear tests done. And even if you’ve had what’s known as the HPV vaccine, that helps to protect you against four strains of cervical cancer, but not all of them, so it’s still really important to get checked out.

The symptoms of cervical cancer can include unusual bleeding, pain during sex, pain in lower back and a change in bowel habits. Now when it comes to the smear test, let’s put it out there, it’s not exactly the most dignified and it’s not painful, but it’s not the comfiest thing in the world, but I can say as a mum of three children, that I’m not a stranger to people a good old rummage around the hoo-ha area, and smear tests certainly aren’t something to be scared of.

What’s going to happen, is you have to go into a room, you’ll be given something to cover yourself up, so you’ve got your dignity, you’ll be asked to lay down, at that point a speculum will be inserted into your vagina, which is essentially an instrument that looks like a penis. On the inside it opens up a little bit and they use a long cotton bud on the inside just to get some cells and then they can be sent for analysis to check that everything is okay.

You may be asked as well to do something like, you often have to put your ankles up near your bum so you can open up your legs as much as possible so they can get in there comfortably, but you may also be asked to make a fist and maybe sit on top of that just to get the angle a bit better so that they can reach the areas that they need to reach easily.

It is certainly something that I would recommend that everyone get done whenever you can get it done, because it really can be a life-changing experience.