Well first you have a brief consultation with the, with the doctor who reviews where you are and when you last came and so on. Then youre asked to go next door and take off your lower garments, if youve got a dress on you can keep that or if youve just got trousers on you take those and your underwear off and you wear a gown.

Then you come back in and you sit on a sort of short couch and that, when youre sitting on it you slide your bottom down to the end of it and your legs are put in kind of like people, one imagines people used to be delivered of child, your knees are hooked over a support so your knees are in the air and then the couch is raised and the doctor sits at the end of it. Theres, where I have mine theres a TV camera system so that the examination, the inside of your vagina, whatever, is shown on the screen in rather gory detail which you can or you may, don’t have to look at. And if you want, what is seen can be explained to you on the screen.

Ive had varying kind of responses, sometimes I feel Id rather not look at that and sometimes I have a look at it and it’s shown to me what, what it means. There are often, because this is a teaching hospital where I go, often medical students present and Im always asked if that’s okay and I always say it is okay as it’s very important for them to have learning experience, particularly important to be with a very good doctor who has very good way of handling patients in that situation.

And the procedure is theres an insertion of a spatula I think to take a smear and later theres an application of a solution of vinegar to the walls of the vagina because I think that solution helps the, show up the cellular formulation. May be it comes before the smear does it, I think it comes while it’s looked at on the camera and that stings a little bit but only, only mildly it’s quite bearable.

And it’s very brief and I think theres a nurse attending who slightly mops you up if you need mopping up and you slide, the couch is lowered, you slide off it and go next door and get dressed and then come back and talk to the doctor again and another appointment is made if you need one. And youre told that youll get the results of the examination in a couple of weeks. Sometimes that happens, sometimes it doesn’t.