Hi, I jusf wanted to share my experience as I’ve recently been diagnosed with ‘high grade precancerous cells’ (CIN 3). This is one stage before cancer, it’s the worst and most serious stage of abnormalities to get.

As scary as it sounds, all of the health professionals I’ve spoken to have all said that if you go for regular smears when they’re due, they can nearly always pick up the early abnormalities before they progress into cancer.

I had the treatment (LLETZ) done a week ago, under local anaesthetic. They now test what they’ve removed to make sure it has ‘clear margins’, if it does it means the treatment has been successful! And I just have more regular smears for a few years, then my risk level goes back to normal. (Yay!)

Where I am, they don’t even treat CIN 1 (low grade) and don’t always treat CIN 2 (moderate grade) because there’s such a significant chance the cells will still go back to normal by themselves and get better. Even my CIN 3 can improve but they told me that at this stage, they judge the risk level high enough to warrant treatment and it isn’t worth waiting any longer. I had the treatment just two days after my results came back.

For what it’s worth - I have only had one partner I’ve had unprotected sex with, one partner I had protected sex with, yet I was still unlucky enough to pick up high risk HPV. You just don’t know til you test, there are no symptoms. It can be passed super easily, through any kind of sexual contact, so it’s really worth keeping up to date with smears for your own peace of mind.

Sienna 🌈