Scratch and scrape this heavenly body. Every inch of winning skin.

[reddragdiva]

This evening I went to the Victoria Clinic for my six-monthly sexual health screen, for the first time in, er, three years. (I plead nearly two years having been with no-one except my darlings.) I don't have HIV and will find out on Tuesday what else I have.

The HIV test is now a strip they put a drop of blood on, and you get a result in twenty or thirty minutes. The chlamydia test requires the Dreaded Penis Swab of Doom. Not that doomy really. The syphilis test required a vial of blood from my arm. The gonorrhea test requires a swab from the throat, penis and anus. ("Now, drop your trousers and lie down on your side with your knees to your chest ...") I also got hepatitis A and B shots, one in each arm, and must return in April for the followup shots. There's no vaccine for hepatitis C as yet; apparently it'll be five years, but they were saying that five years ago.

If you're asymptomatic, it takes about a month for an appointment. But they're all very nice and good to deal with. I recommend them highly.

Comments

[lpetersson.livejournal.com]

I was actually thinking that it's time for my annual check-up.
How long was the wait at this clinic?

[reddragdiva]

Three to five weeks. You get in quicker if you have s*x with m*n. But if you just want a checkup and have no particular reason to think you have anything, then a month isn't going to make a huge amount of difference.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Rargh. The one time I went for a full test they lost my blood and urine samples and we had to stop the swab for chlamydia and gonorrhea because I screamed at the doctor.

... I hate speculums.

You are a braver man than I.

[reddragdiva]

The Penile Swab of Doom was really not very doomy at all — pretty thin and only went in a coupla centimetres. I guess I must have a massive urethra to go with my pounding c*ck.

[cookwitch.livejournal.com]

I went to the walk in at Barts and St Thomas for my 10,000 mile service, as it were. Saw me within 1/2 an hour, got the resuts in two weeks. I did have a fair bit of Ow! though.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Whereas the vaginal swab goes in until it sticks out the top of your head and they shove a medieval torture device up your twat first and then look blank and puzzled and say "THAT SHOULDN'T HURT, CLEARLY YOU HAVE SOME SORT OF CHRONIC PAIN PROBLEM" to which the only sensible response is "You are shoving an ENORMOUS PIECE OF METAL into my ladyparts, OF COURSE IT FUCKING HURTS".

I love doctors. *scowl*

[reddragdiva]

Oh, and if you still haven't had a Test For Everything, do try the Victoria Clinic. You'll get to queue forever because you're not a Man (despite your brain) Having Sex With Men, but they're very nice and all and will undoubtedly be far more skilled in it than wherever you went before ;-)

[reddragdiva]

/me works out 10,000 miles divided by six inches
/me looks at you enviously

[cookwitch.livejournal.com]

Oh!! Well, that's not quite what I meant but, err. [ahem]

*blushes*

[baljemmett.livejournal.com]

Only six?
/me puts it away again

[cookwitch.livejournal.com]

That didn't actually hurt me - although apparently I have a ticklish cervix becuase it really made me laugh. A lot.

*blinks*

The urethral swab however....argheeoowwww! I may have even said A Rude Word.

[twicezero.livejournal.com]

hey, good for you; but the chlamydia thing, Oh My God. Just the thought put my stomach in spasumns for years afterwards, though it does appear that i can think about it and breathe these days. T'was a treatment thing rather than just a swab... I'll never look at an umbrella in the same way again.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Not much point, I have little to no intention of sticking my astral wang in anyone for a long time yet and when I had blood tests done back in 2003 I was neither syphilitic, HIV postive or hepititic. There's no reason for that to have changed.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

I very nearly kicked the Nice Lady Doctor when I was having the vaginal swab. The urethal one didn't happen at all. Funny, that.

[reddragdiva]

No umbrellas!

[lpetersson.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, sorry, I actually meant on the day :)
Several hours or half an hour or so?

[cookwitch.livejournal.com]

Perhaps they'd heard tell that they might get kicked, which is why they were nice to me?

[reddragdiva]

I was there about thirty, forty minutes this evening.

[lpetersson.livejournal.com]

Evening appointments.
Ideal...

[redcountess]

I hate speculums as well, but when you have gynae problems you soon become blasé about them, except for the time I went to the casualty department of a women's hospital in Melbourne, and they initially used a speculum more suited to a partially dilated woman, eep!

[hazyjayne.livejournal.com]

And then they go for the smaller one, which they actually manage to get in... but which still hurts ALOT... Bah!

[reddragdiva]

In high demand. Call now and you might get one Nov/Dec!

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Order of magnitude, order of magnitude.

If you want to work on the basis of an average of 12", then go ahead.

[http://users.livejournal.com/raven_/]

Funky.

[individuation.livejournal.com]

Yea for caring about good sexual health.

I did the whole battery of tests recently too. Even though I didn't think I had anything to worry about - i still found myself slipping into worry mode during the week that I waited for my results.

Always good to have'em come back negative :)

[simonb.livejournal.com]

Strangely enough I had pretty much the same thing done on Thursday; except that I had the fun of a trainee nurse doing both of the swabbing required from the urinary tract. I think I did manage to boggle her a little bit when I looked at my blood pumping into the vials.

I head back there in two weeks to get the results and make a start on a HepB vaccination which they offered me.

[loosechanj.livejournal.com]

Can't you just hand them your underwear? *ba-doom-tish*

[vatine]

"Foot-long schlong"? Sounds like a (bad) pr0n-film, to me.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

This post sparked a bit of a household debate about pros and cons of different tests, which got quite into the ethical difficulties implicit in choice of test. Hazards of living with a doctor.

We did agree, though, that the NHS seems pretty crappy in comparison to Australian health services -- which probably isn't a surprise.

In Australia, you could have got this all done various places without the wait. And you would have got an MSU PCR (hey, I can talk in medical TLAs!) rather than swabs, which is less invasive and more accurate. And a more accurate HIV test (that would have required a full blood test, but as you already had blood taken anyway, no more trouble).

[secretlondon.livejournal.com]

Thank you for reminding me I need to go for a smear. Everytime I see the GP she reminds me - I guess I just procrastinate..

[lpetersson.livejournal.com]

I'm in no rush so that suits me just fine...

[reddragdiva]

The NHS is crappy in its special way, but it isn't that awful. The strip test for HIV has few enough false negatives (particularly after the three-month window) that it's a worthwhile first test; the nurse said it's about 2% false positive, but in the event of a positive you can be sure they'd do the more stringent tests.

You can get all the tests done at your GP, but the Victoria Clinic is just a good place to get them done in general.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Reading that made me cringe despite a lack of appropriate parts to feel your pain in.

[baljemmett.livejournal.com]

Since when has logic prevented some muppet from trying to start a DSW?

[Although is an error of 30+% acceptable? I suppose for a throwaway line it makes no odds...]

[siani-hedgehog.livejournal.com]

... I hate speculums.

i've never had the slightest problem with them. good muscle control means the ability to relax on command. either that or i'm like a bucket, and the reviews say otherwise. only once, in a particularly uninformative exam, when they shoved away without saying they were about to, have i ever found it noticeably unpleasant.

[reddragdiva]

Perhaps you have just favoured men of great enormity!

[siani-hedgehog.livejournal.com]

perhaps! i've certainly never seen anything under 6".

[redcountess]

That's ok, I always wince when I see a guy get hit in the tender parts in a film, etc! Empathy is a strange thing :-)

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

Oh.
Yeah.
That.

YAK.

[narnee.livejournal.com]

Go to a different clinic. They should always warm up the speculum and cover it copiously with lube before inserting it, and make sure that it's not causing an unusual amount of pain when it's being inserted.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

In an astonishing turn of events, I find it hard to relax any part of me when someone I've only just met is brandishing an enormous metal duck beak in the direction of my nether regions.

Perhaps I'm just prudish.

[siani-hedgehog.livejournal.com]

i'm unusually good at conscious control of muscle relaxation in that area. doing pelvic floor exercises at work helps.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

It was warm and lubed. I'm just ... skittish about having things shoved into my bits, I think.

[reddragdiva]

And if you were six feet tall, that'd be, like, 7½".