Ok girls, this is for you. I am an NP in a busy Oakland clinic. It comes to my attention all the time that Lesbian women think they do not need yearly GYN (gynecology) exams which should include a breast exam, abdominal exam and complete GYN exam which includes vagina and rectum if over 40, pap/HPV testing! Pap smears are dependent on your history and will not be done on a yearly exam all the time. If you do not have a history of abnormal paps and a (+) HPV (human papilloma virus) which are done together in women over age 26, you can have your pap done every 2-3 years. With a history we follow women yearly with paps/HPV so that we can catch any changes early and fix them. This is the easiest preventible cancer! I will often find things that can easily be taken care of if caught early on a "yearly" routine GYN exam. Prevention is the ticket. This goes for all of us heterosexual/bisexual/lesbian, women. Protect your temple, protect your partners. Be safe, make sure you talk about your sexual history together and don't trust till trust is earned. Use those condoms/female condoms with new partners. "No glove no love." Lenoreable
typewriter
07-19-2010, 10:29 PM
I appreciate the public service announcement!
...Just wanted to make the addition/clarification that the reasons queer women and transpeople avoid getting annual exams trend heavily toward a fear of heterosexist attitudes and discrimination --not a simple lack of awareness about the need for exams.
For queer women it's a world that largely does not recognize them and makes very few efforts to. For transpeople it is a terribly difficult, sometimes dangerous, and often humiliating world to navigate.
For queer people that fall within any other minority (or minorities) category such as low-income, person of color, disabled, etc. just keep multiplying the fear factors...
This is a prevalent issue, even in the bay area. These fears are real and substantiated by present-tense events relevant to most queer people's lives.
This is very different from queer people thinking that they simply do not need an exam and it's an important distinction to make. Most healthcare providers do not place a priority on understanding the needs of the queer community and/or rely on assumptions that don't apply to many queer people...
Most forms only offer "male" and "female" check boxes instead of a line for an individual to specify how they identify their gender
Most OBGYN clinic staff are not trained to handle transgender patients, partners of transgender patients, or patients that fall anywhere outside the context of a hetero cis woman --even though the need for all of the above is more than justified.
There are real reasons queer people don't trust the medical community --many of which are due to medical providers refusing to be accountable and educate themselves.