"Just Some Cramping"

I was diagnosed with HPV in the Fall of 2007. I went for my routine pap smear and when my results came back abnormal, the Student Health Center checked me automatically for HPV, and found that I am infected with the "high risk" strains. The strains that cause some forms of cervical cancer. So, the SHC referred me to a real gynecologist's office for "further testing." The doctor I was referred to, while nice, lacked the basic understanding of what reaction the tests and procedures would elicit from my body.. being a man.

Nothing against men, but when you tell me that I may experience "just some cramping" isn't really equivalent to what happened. After my colposcopy (you know, the one where they cut off little bits of your cervix for testing for those pesky cancerous cells), the vaginal cramping was so severe that I couldn't reinsert my NuvaRing. Nevermind the pain. That's not "just some cramping." But it got better! The results showed that I did have some dysplasia (precancerous cells), so my doctor recommended cryosurgery. Basically, this boils down to sending super-cooled CO2 at my cervix. For three minutes. Three minutes of the coldest thing I've ever felt at one of the spots in my body that is normally somewhere around 98.6 degrees fahrenheit. Definitely the worst experience of my entire life. And my poor male doctor was laboring under the impression that I'd just have some cramps.

Had I known three years ago that the vaccine out there would have stopped me from going through that, I would have gotten it. The fact is, the education out there for us on HPV just isn't enough to let people be careful enough. I use condoms, every time I had sex, and I still got it. I had no idea that there was an STD that I could get even with all the available protection. If my doctors had told me I should protect myself with a simple vaccine when the number of sexual partners I'd had jumped from 1 to 5 in a year on that survey form when you go for your pap smear... I'd definitely have done it. But now I've got a virus that might give me cancer. Nice.

Amortentsia, early 20's