Colpo Clinic

(part of the Unsolicited Health Advice series)

Ladies, get your yearly Paps done if you don't. (We're still under 30 so the recommendation is still yearly). I spent the afternoon in the colposcopy clinic looking at cervices of women with abnormal paps. Most of them were young, about my age or younger. These folks had cervices that were not too concerning to our attending, because the lesions looked like changes that would most likely regress ("regress" is perhaps the wrong word, but rather your immune system will get rid of it) since we're young and healthy. The last patient, however, had had a biopsy that was high-grade and there were still high-grade lesions on followup. The resident proceeded to do cryosurgery to freeze the lesions off (kinda like how dermatologists do that to warts on fingers and stuff, but on your cervix = more crampy pain). Hopefully that took care of the rest of the lesions, they'll find out in 4 months.

Things I got pimped on: it takes 8-10 years for high grade lesions to develop into cancer, 20 years for low grade lesions. (Pimping on numbers and percentages isn't good for me yet; I know mechanisms and stuff, but epidemiology?!)

While I'm on my soapbox on Women's Health, OCPs, if used for 5+ years, have a 70% reduction in risk of ovarian and endometrial cancer. Not to mention, if your periods are heavy and painful, OCPs can help decrease that too. (this is one of the many features of OCPs. There are other pros and cons to all types of birth control, ask your doctor!)

....That sounded a whole lot like a pharma commercial, sorry.

I like clinic. The hours are nice, but things move fast. Time to work on being an efficient history taker...