Maybe I should just declare this Gynuary?

[oursin]

Because reproductive and sexual health seems to be a bit of a theme at present.

Noted lately in the paper: Young women put off smear tests due to feelings of embarrassment and concerns about being hurt, a survey suggests i.e. the 'Pap' test for cervical cell abnormalities.

At first, misled by the descriptor 'young', I wondered whether this was a cohort which had received the HPV vaccine in pre-adolescence and therefore felt themselves to enjoy a happy immunity to the worries that might lead women to be meticulous in taking up the opportunity to been screened (entirely free under the NHS). But in fact one discovers that 'Almost one in three women aged 25 to 64 have not had a smear test within the timeframe the NHS recommends', which is only barely within the demographic to which routine HPV vaccination would apply.

I'm also a bit bewildered by the issues expressed about shame and embarrassment in the context of medical examinations, which - or maybe not? one might anticipate women might undergo in other routine contexts of healthcare.

I guess that whole 70s self-help group thing of 'let's get hold of a load of plastic speculums and examine our own and each others' cervixes' has really gone the way of the dodo, eh?

Repeats the - well I think it's hilarious - anecdote of the nurse who was doing an internal exam (not actually in this particular medical context) and said 'o dear, I can't find your cervix'* - great temptation to say, 'well, I brought it with me - maybe I left it out in the waiting area - ': BOOM! BOOM!

*Apparently some of us have what is known as a pinhole cervix. ?TMI?