Smear test.

Now I honestly never thought I'd be typing a post like this and I know this is a bit different from my usual posts about travelling BUT I feel this is super important and very close to my heart.

This year so far has been one of the most incredible years of my life! I quit my job, moved to Australia, met the absolute love of my life, turned the big 25 and had a Cervical cancer scare. This hit me like a tone of bricks!

For 12 months now I have been asking my local doctors if I could get a smear test and due to moving to Australia I wanted to get it done before I left and was told I didn't need to worry about it till I was 25. Obviously I knew I would be spending my 25th birthday down under so said I wanted it done before I left. I had my smear test done in April 2019 and phoned just before I headed back to Aus to find out the results, where I was told if they hadn't got in touch with me that no news was good news. I was relieved! Having been back in Australia for around 3 weeks I received a call from my mum saying I had a letter from the doctors and if I wanted her to open in. It wasn't good news, I had cells which they thought was cervical cancer and I needed to have a colposcopy as soon as possible. Now being in Australia and at the time without a medicare card this proved difficult (as I was having to pay for appointments without getting anything back, being a backpacker this sucked BUT my amazing family helped out with this A LOT). I had to book in with a GP (Which at the time I was in Perth for my birthday, so had to wait to see a GP in Melbourne before I headed to Mildura for my farm work) where I needed to get a referral to send to a specialist so I then could be considered for my colposcopy. All very complicated but stay with me! Once I had received my referral from Melbourne I contacted a specialist in Mildura and was told my colposcopy would be mid August which felt like a lifetime away. Then for the anxious wait until my colposcopy...

I had my colposcopy on the 14th August 2019 (took a day off farm work for this) and while I was there they did a biopsy due to wanting to do some extra tests to be sure and all came back fine! Which was a massive weight lifted. I've been asked to keep going for check up's ever 12 months just incase but for now all is good!

I can not express enough how important it is for all woman out there to go get there smear test done. I was so nervous but it was so worth it and even though there was some concern I was able to get extra tests and potentially do something about it if it came back as bad news.

I am so lucky I have the support of my family and my incredible boyfriend who has been there through the tears, tantrums, appointments and scans. I couldn't have done it without him especially being on the other side of the world without my family around me.