Hi
Hopefully I am the light of hope to anyone reading this endless list of pain and trauma.😔
I am 54 and I first approached my GP in 2017 as I could feel a ball like lump protruding out of my cervix os every month about 4 days prior to my period. After the period it had gone again until the next month.
I went in for a smear and a ‘look’, deliberately arranged for one of the days the lump was out of ‘hiding’🙈
My GP who was wonderful (I’ve since moved and lost her as my local doctor sadly) said it was a ‘pinky polyp’ but because there was a slight possibility it could be cancerous ( but she totally doubted it) she would send me 2 weeks pathway to the local hospital. Kings Lynn QE to get it checked.
The appointment came and it fell on a ‘hiding’ day.
I went to the appointment, told them it wasn’t the right day to see it, and was basically laughed at.😡
During the examination 3 major things happened.
a) a) The person doing the examination repeatedly touched my clitoris with his thumb and sent the chaperone nurse out of the room and continued to do this whilst she was absent ( I made a complaint and had to go to an awful hearing where I was basically gaslighted and bullied into trying to get me to say what happened didn’t and it wasn’t his thumb it was the speculum, also it was inferred I didn’t know which part of my body was being touched as ‘ I was considerably older than when I had my last gyny exams and my vagina would be slacker by now’, 🤬🤬and the word CANCER said at every opportunity trying to scare me)
b) He caused so much damage and pain whilst performing the exam not even entering into the womb I was heavily bleeding after and post exam I got a water infection (this is relevant later when I describe my hysteroscopies as to the extent the force and roughness he must have inflicted on me)
c) He basically told me I was lying about why I was there as there was no lump and my GP was lying about seeing it as well.
After this terrible experience, as I say an official enquiry was held at the hospital, which resulted in the usual ‘lessons have been learnt we’re sending him on a course letter .. (oh and by the way according the NHS trust King Lynn the nurses aren’t in the room for the benefit of the patient they are there for the Dr so the fact he sent her off was perfectly ok… so just be warned )
So I was no further toward my ‘hiding polyp’ being sorted.😓
At this point my GP referred me to the Fitzwilliam Hospital, this is a bupa hospital , which I do actually have membership of, but they don’t cover cancer care, so I was sent there using the freedom of patient choice option as a NHS funded patient for diagnostic assessment
I was allowed to explain about the ‘hiding’ and sensibly arrange an appointment around its appearance.
Low and behold, on the day, the consultant saw it, snipped it, and sent it off all very quickly, easily and painlessly, and without touching any part of my now obviously ‘slack’ vagina that made me feel like Id been abused after. Also the nurse, stayed in the room the whole time, for my benefit. (please excuse my sarcasm but its still something that makes me terribly angry)🤬
A year later I was still experiencing heavy periods and mid cycle bleeding, so I approached my GP and asked if I could go back to the Fitzwilliam Peterborough as I had been told after the ‘hiding’🙈 polyp if I was worried to just request to go back.
I went back, again as a NHS funded patient and was scanned ( externally only) which showed up a small fibroid (1.5cm) and another small sessile polyp 1cm ( on a thin stalk) within the uterine cavity.
An outpatient hysteroscopy and biopsy was booked for the following week and I went in
During this procedure I truly felt no pain.
Put into the chair, a speculum inserted, I was given a shot of LA in the cervix, which I felt slight pressure but I felt no sensation of numbing or pain or anything only the movement/pressure of things being up there.
During the actual procedure whilst he was inside the womb he cut the polyp stalk, removed it and also scraped round and gathered womb lining tissue samples. But he advised he was leaving the fibroid as it was small and would probably just calcify after menopause. We were happily chatting during the time he was working, the nurse held my hand intially but once it was obvious I was fine she busied helping him etc.
During all this I felt no pain or even slightest uncomfortable apart from the normal level of embarrassment of course of being in a brightly light room with my legs in the air 🙀
The samples were sent off and 2 weeks later he rang me and told me that it was all perfectly normal tissue and no need to come back unless the periods got so bad I wanted to go ahead with the ablation procedure we’d discussed ( I cant use progestin or tranexamic acid because of blood clotting)
All through covid 2020/2021 my period became heavier and heavier and tbh I was thinking it would soon come to a much anticipated halt in the ladies plumbing department as I am now 54.
But sadly it got so bad that the mid month bleeding was actually starting to join up with the end of the month periods and the amount of loss was making me and my husband feel like we were living on the set of some mad chain saw murder slasher film for 2/3rd of the month.🧛♂️
In fact I started bleeding on 13th December and it just carried on in one form or another through til half way into January.
Because we moved house and my GP had changed (Ive never even laid eyes on them) I didn’t get any reaction asking to be referred NHS so I asked for a private referral to go back to see the consultant. at Peterborough.
So this time I was a private patient (Im just telling you that to show paying and going to him NHS made no difference to the care provided, all that’s different is you sit in a separate ‘posher’ lounge with comfier chairs while you wait for him to come out and collect you)
I emailed him initially with the referral and he got his secretary to ring me with a phone appointment. I was then booked in to go and have a pelvic scan as before but this time it was internal as well as external but I am finding it more difficult these days to hold a lot of urine so I'm not surprised
The scans revealed 2 fibroids ( obviously the 1 from before plus a friend, it must have got lonely 👯♀️) and they were now 2.5cm each and a lump, believed to be another polyp but this time 1.8cm big. And a very thickened womb lining.
He said the new polyp had probably been growing a while longer than the first 2 as I had been putting off going cos of covid, but was still removable by hysteroscopy. He urged me to go for GA for this procedure as this polyp looked to be broad based (penduculated) not on a thin stalk like the other 2 I’d had, and in his words ‘Im going to have to scoop it out like using an ice cream scoop out of the lining’
I was adamant I’d be fine reminding him the last hysteroscopy I’d had he’d asked me 3 times if I was ok during the procedure until finally Id raised my head to look down at him through my legs and say ‘yes Im fine! are you ok?’ to which both he and the nurse had had to subdue their laughter.
So on the 16th Feb I had another hysteroscopy with LA, and again even with a bigger polyp to remove and he took about 4 times as much womb lining than last time, and having to ‘ice cream scoop’ the polyp out of the side of my womb….. I felt nothing.
The worst part as always is the indignity of it , but at my age you just have to forget about pride don’t you.
Im now waiting for the results in a weeks time.
I suffer fibromyalgia and so I’m pretty used to pain, I have deformity of my foot which makes my right leg shorter than my left and this has terrible impact on hip and spine pain, so I’m not someone who doesn’t feel pain and pretty acute on a regular basis. I’m not exceptional.
I have never had children so therefore my womb and cervix you would think would be less accessible than someone who had given birth in their life time.
And although my consultant is charming and came highly recommended after by terrible abuse by a NHS gyny I doubt is he has superhuman gyny powers over all others.
I hope this story, although long, is a shining light amongst so many scarey tales I have read through on here.
My message, some of you might just be like me and breeze through it. For those who didn’t my sincere sympathies. Don’t let it stop you getting treated, pain is bad, but dying is final .
and I thought you might like to meet ' the hiding polyp' so attached his picture ( it must have been a he nothing female could cause that much problem LOL)
