I wanted a buy-one-get-one-free deal for my vagina during a smear test - why did everyone make it so difficult?

Yesterday, after months of stuffing reminder letters into a pile of magazines, I decided to take control and book a smear test. I figured I’d combine it with a sexual health check, because, you know, while they’re up there.

It’s not pleasant taking half your clothes off and lying on a camp bed with a scratchy bit of tissue placed pointlessly across your cunt. It’s tricky to, “relax, just relax,” when a stranger is invading your vagina with a set of plastic serving tongs they’ve apparently found in an ice bucket.

It’s uncomfortable, lying there with your vagina lodged open, while they scratch about at your cervix, with what feels like a chicken’s foot. Then there’s remembering to get it done in the middle of your menstrual cycle, 14 days after the end of your last period. Trying to fit this in your diary – and getting an appointment at this time – is like trying to find platform 9 ¾ at King’s Cross station.

So having psyched myself up for a smear test, it seemed to make sense that I got a sexual health check while I was at it. Just one appointment, rather than two, to book, and dread attending. Just one appointment, rather than two, at which I’d roll up my clothes, shove my knickers in my handbag, and hope they didn’t find any weeds in my lady garden.

So I rang the number for a group of sexual health clinics that are near me in London. They said they would do a health check but not a smear. “But couldn’t you just do one while you’re fiddling about anyway?” No, they said, I should see my GP. I asked if there were other options - was there anywhere I could kill two birds with one stone? “No. We recommend you see your GP.”

I went back online and found another number. After queuing again, to get through to reception, I was told they did both smear tests and sexual health checks. YAY! Except, I’d need to book two separate appointments. What? “It would take half an hour to do both and we don’t give out half hour appointments.” But, I don’t want to come twice and surely it’s quicker overall, to do the lot in one appointment? “Sorry, no, the appointments are 15 minutes each, there wouldn’t be time to do both in one appointment.” OK, so can I book two 15 minute appointments, that are back-to-back, so I can get it all done at once? “We won’t have any available.”

It is perhaps testimony to my persistence as a freelancer, that I clung on to that call until I’d persuaded her that at some point in the future, there must surely be a date on which two back-to-back appointments would be available. And so I now have a date in my diary, for an appointment across London, in the relatively near future.

Should it really be this challenging? I’d understand the problem if I was asking to combine my smear test with a vajazzle, or my sexual health check with a bikini wax. But cervical screenings and sexual health checks are both crucial – and potentially life saving. I’m sure I’m not the only one who dreads these appointments, and puts them off like the plague – so surely it should be as quick and easy as possible to book one.

If we really want to catch cervical cancer early, and prevent the spread of STIs, I suggest that it becomes standard practise to allow women to combine cervical screenings with sexual health checks, and halve the humiliation of taking our pants off for strangers brandishing icy implements.