JOIN A RAPE & ABUSE SURVIVOR AT A HUGE GYNAE APPOINTMENT | VLOG & A COLLABORATION WITH AMAZON UK INCLUDED!

 

I found a strength I've never known
I've been thrown out, I've been burned

When I'm finished, they won't even know your name

You brought the flames, and you put me through hell
I had to learn how to fight for myself

Ke$ha – Praying

On May 2^nd, I had to attend an appointment with Gynaecology to discuss having my smear under a general anaesthetic. I decided to film the day for two reasons: the first, was to provide empathy and advice to other survivors and those in a similar situation. The second reason was to give insight to those who judge people for not having this procedure. My general message from this? Don’t judge a person’s journey, when you haven’t walked in their shoes. In case there are people out there who are interested in this experience and don’t want to or can’t watch videos, I thought I would write a quick blog post about it too and managed to get a collaboration with Amazon UK for it! At the end, however, I’ve still also inserted the entire vlog from YouTube…

COME ALONG WITH ME TO MY FIRST SMEAR | HAVING A SMEAR AFTER RAPE & ABUSE

*this post includes a vlog at the end so please stick it out!*

The reason this is all happening:

Every day I’m NOT Disordered has so many views from new readers and so, to cater to any newbies, I thought I’d explain why having a smear is even a difficulty for me…

When I was fifteen, someone I had appreciated and who everyone else respected and admired, began hurting me (the ‘hurt’ being defined as sexual abuse and one instance of rape). For legal reasons, I can’t name him or even his career because apparently that would be an identifiable detail; but I can say that he was in a position of power and had a huge amount of control and influence over a massively important part of my life.

The influence of Jade Goody…

The first time I can remember becoming aware of smears was when Jade Goody died in 2009 after her Cervical Cancer spread to other areas of her body… Before Jade’s death, there was a trend in the UK with the decline of smears in women between 25 and 29 years old; but when her diagnosis was publicised, medical authorities reported a surge in smear requests from young women. As a result of this, the government health ministers reviewed England’s NHS policy not to screen for Cervical Cancer until the age of 25, even though it was set to 20 in the rest of the UK – the review didn’t change things though: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/cervical-screening/when-youll-be-invited/  

Smear shaming & why there should be no place for it:

So, even though I was only 18 at the time of Jade’s death, the publicity surrounding it was everywhere – to the point that it was hard to ignore, and hard to remember it wasn’t exactly relevant to me and my age. Ironically – but kind of predictably – even being over two years since the abuse had started and I had been raped, I hadn’t noticed anything in the media about those topics; which meant that whilst everyone was concentrating on the importance of screening for Cervical Cancer, there wasn’t a whole lot out there about why some may struggle to undergo such a procedure.