2.) Schedule your annual GYN exam! Annual checkups are important — especially when it comes to GYN care. Getting an annual exam and pap smear can help prevent cancer, and make sure you stay healthy. Oh dear. An annual manual exam cannot make sure of anything at all beyond the fact that someone possesses a vagina, let alone ensure that someone “stay healthy”. And haven’t ACOG even stated now that yearly smears are unnecessary in the vast majority of cases? I’m not an American. I come from a place where (if you have no gynaecological problems) you don’t tend to get an internal examination until you’re fairly well along in a pregnancy. You get your first smear at 25 if you’ve been sexually active. Americans I’ve talked to have been told that they need a ‘baseline’ smear before becoming sexually active, which is an absolutely ridiculous concept, as the cells continue their maturation up until the mid-twenties anyway. They’ve been told that yearly PAPs/manuals will keep them safe from everything from ovarian cysts to uterine cancer. I’ve witnessed vag-owners having online meltdowns because they haven’t had a manual exam in 13 months and are convinced they’ll get some horrible disease and die from it. These are overwhelmingly young people without the money or insurance necessary to afford such testing in the first place, who in addition to their financial woes, are now driven to obsess that every twinge and every glob of discharge is indicative of cancer. The scariest thing of all is the group of people who believe that annual PAPs/manuals always test for all STIs. The fallout from this is astonishing, because partners are accused of cheating, relationships are destroyed, fertility is damaged – all because someone picked up chlamydia years ago, was asymptomatic, and assumed that their annual tested for STIs. Don’t even get me started on mandatory PAPs/manuals for birth control prescriptions. Like I said, we don’t have this culture of ‘annuals’ here. We’re not forced to submit for yearly inspections like cars, or treated as forever ‘pre-sick’ because we possess female sex organs, and oddly enough our disease detection and cancer survival rates virtually mirror those of the U.S. So what’s the rationale behind it when even the likes of ACOG say it’s unnecessary? The cynic in me thinks it’s a combination of training vagina-owners to be submissive to medical professionals+the financial rewards of practically forcing millions of people to have yearly examinations. I wish someone could prove me wrong.
As a person who’s followed mammography research for over 10 years, I agreed with the 2009 recommendations suggesting scaling back the visits (http://nyti.ms/1Qb4X5). And I don’t agree w annual pap exams either. This is not true prevention. It is detection. We can’t put our faith in the medical community to save us, we need to take responsibility for our own health, support research to understand cancer development and support each other in making lifestyle changes to protect ourselves (http://bit.ly/OnAky).
Thank you Paraxini. I have similar angry feelings about the mandatory pap test before a woman is allowed to have birth control. As a person with no insurance here in good ole America, I can tell you that the annual pap (which I would just as rather skip) costs anywhere from $80 at the university health clinic and Planned Parenthood to well over $400 at a private clinic. You know, for all the good that Planned Parenthood does for the individuals that use them, I have never liked them precisely because they force exams. I have also rarely encountered PP staff who are any good at interacting with rape survivors or women who are anxious about the exam for other reasons. For an institution that works so hard to protect our right to choose to continue or terminate a pregnancy, they certainly don’t seem to care about making an informed decision to not have a pap test.
I agree with all said above. Although I personally don’t have a problem getting the pap annually (then again I’m 20 and on my parents insurance while I go to school) since I am sexually active with my boyfriend, I definitely do not think it should be required. Especially, given that one of my friends was practically forced to get one when she turned 20 to keep getting the pill for her endometriosis. The whole thing was incredibly painful for her since she is so small, but the doctor (male I might add -_-) carried on. But, for the most part I think the reason maybe so many people are for the annual check ups in general is because they don’t trust themselves enough to know their own bodies. …sigh… I could go on a tangent rant but I won’t. it would basically boil down to better health education and sex education, which seems to happen some places and not others in the US.. and even within the same school district.