HPV, Cervical Cancer, and What To Do About It

[Listen to an audio version of this blog HERE.]

**This blog serves as a Public Service Announcement to get your pap smear, and as a personal account of my lived experience. I am not a doctor or even remotely medically literate. Seek professional care if you are concerned or have further questions about your own reproductive health.

Just over a year ago, I had cancerous cells removed from my cervix. I initially went to my gynecologist to have an IUD inserted, and while he was up in there, he did a standard pap smear even though I wasn’t “due” for one for another year.

Fast forward a few weeks, and a nurse called me to tell me the pap smear came back, and she had some bad news. There were some abnormal cells detected, and I needed to have a biopsy done. The biopsy was painful and weird; I could hear my doc snip samples from my cervix to test different areas and worse yet, I could feel the snips. He took seven samples in total, apologizing the entire time because, as you can imagine, the process was wildly uncomfortable.

The samples were tested and the tissue was considered “high-risk” meaning that if it wasn’t removed, there was a strong chance it would spread and I’d need more aggressive treatment. Cervical cancer is the fourth most common type of cancer afflicting women worldwide. In the…