Hi, I'm very confident that I have vaginismus and I currently don't know what to do about getting a pap smear. The last time I tried years ago, I had to stop before they could finish because it was so painful. My current plan is to never have one for the rest of my life and just hope nothing goes wrong. And if I do get some type of cancer, then that's just the way I'm meant to go.
But, obviously, that's not the healthiest way to approach this problem. So, is there anything that can be done to make this procedure not hurt so much?
Hello! Thank you for trusting me to answer. <3
That's unfortunately common with vaginismus. But there are some options to make it hurt less, 100%!
Asking for a smaller speculum (which is what they use to hold your vagina open), asking them to warm it up (which can cause you to tense up less), asking for a plastic speculum as opposed to a metal one (also can be more comfortable and help you tense up less), explaining to them you need them to go slowly, sometimes you can even ask if you can put the speculum in yourself if you have some success with vaginal penetration despite your vaginismus.
It can also be really helpful to find a doctor who is knowledgable about vaginismus! There are OBG/YNs who specifically specialize in giving pap smears to people with sexual trauma and/or vaginismus and they have lots of tricks they've learned over the years to make it less painful and help people get through it.
You can also look into exercises to help with vaginismus and see if any of those help! If you talked to a doctor about it, they could at the very least refer you to someone who knows what you'd need to look into and could even suggest a physical therapist!
That way you could work on managing your vaginismus so that you could work up to eventually attempting a pap smear.
I know quite a few people who've used vaginal dilators to help themselves work up to pap smears and while I wouldn't say it's easy, it was definitely helpful.
Hopefully, this helps a little bit! Let me know if you have any other questions, Anon, and good luck! 👍
