I went to the hospital for appendicitis and accidentally got a Pap smear

Imagine waking up at 2am vomiting and unable to move from your bathroom floor. I’m not saying I haven’t done that before but it usually only happens when I’ve been out until that late and I can pinpoint exactly why I’m throwing up (probably tequila).

It’s the first weekend of spring semester and Martin Luther King Jr. Day gave me an extra day off from classes. An extra day to go out and not worry about classes, or so you’d think. But this shit was violent and unlike anything I’ve every experienced. I’m someone who hates throwing up so I knew it was bad. After calling my mom and asking her what to do, I grabbed some Tylenol to get my fever down. But of course, just my luck, my fever only went up to almost 102. I roughly spent the hours between two or three in the morning and five in the evening between my bed and my bathroom floor. After realizing things were not getting better, I called a friend to take me to the campus medical center because I had pain on the same side as my appendix.

After several tests, pain meds, an ER room that felt like it was a sauna in Hell, the doctors come into my room and say that it’s not appendicitis. Thank god, because I wasn’t ready for surgery. What the doctors then told me was that I could have a cyst on my ovary and they would need to perform a pelvic exam… aka a pap smear AND a vaginal ultrasound.

About a half hour goes by and the female doctor who had been with me for the past seven hours now hadn’t come back. I was starting to think to myself that maybe some labs came back and they were figuring it out.

Nope, I was far from right. In walks a male doctor who had been popping in occasionally, an older man and a male nurse with all the equipment I’d never seen before. They briefed me on what was about to happen, with my friend who took me to the hospital sitting right beside me. She’s the real MVP.

So here’s what happens. The doctor shoved two fingers into me, felt around and then the clamp went it. That’s what everyone tells you is cold and cold does not even describe it. This clamp looks like a duck beak and it’s being shoved into your body and feels like it came straight from the freezer. While the clamp is in there, they insert a giant q-tip and swab your cervix.

Once the clamp is in there it’s hard to focus on anything else going on, so I just kind of held my breath and nodded to whatever they were saying.

I had expected a sort of calming way of the clamp being inserted, but it just got shoved right up in there. And yes, there was loads of awkward eye contact and me holding my breath. I thought that maybe the doctor would ask me a question or two and be in and out real quick. It felt like the clamp was in there for 10 minutes. My legs were in stirrups so all my business was just exposed. Just picture yourself in a room with your childhood best friend sitting beside you while a male doctor and a male nurse prod around your lady parts. This being my first pap smear, I honestly did not expect it to go down quite like it did. The doctor did warn me that the clamp was clearly smaller than a penis, so there was no serious penetration, but it was still uncomfortable. It just kind of felt like when your tampon isn’t quite in just right and you can’t adjust because you’re walking somewhere, but a little worse.

Once the clamp is out, the nurse informs me that because of the suspected cyst on my ovary that they will need to do an ultra sound… vaginally. I think they put the same gel stuff on that giant wand looking thing that they put on pregnant ladies’ stomachs for ultrasounds. But the nurse (still male) lubed this thing up with the gel, which was also freezing cold, and inserted it. But that wasn’t even the worst part. Not only did I have this uncomfortable ultrasound wand in me, but he had to move it around to be able to see my ovaries. I was already in a lot of pain because the meds were wearing off and no one had come by to re-dose me.

The ultrasound was by far worse than the pap smear. The wand they used literally looked like a light saber and scared me half to death. This thing was MASSIVE, and it just went in me. I think I could have dealt with the wand just being inserted but once it had to be moved around to locate my ovary, which they never did find, it was all over. It felt like something was stabbing my insides and I burst into tears. Yelled for someone to get me pain meds only to be too late. I felt like a science project just being poked and pinched throughout the whole process.

After all of that, they had no idea what was wrong with me. They couldn’t even find my ovary so the ultrasound must have just been for fun. Thankfully by the time I had gotten to the hospital around six o’clock in the evening I only threw up until about eight o’clock. After that it was just severe pain. The doctors told me it was a virus of some sort and after 10 hours in that ER room I was released to go home.

The whole experience was very uncomfortable because for one I was not expecting any of that to happen and it was with doctors I was not familiar with. I guess any pap smear is awkward but I think it would have been less traumatizing if I had been with my doctors I go to.

For now, I think I’m a little terrified of pap smears to say the least. When I do go to my gynecologist for a pap smear, what would have been my first one, later this year, i’ll know what to expect.