Reply #6: **Nursing Student Here** :)

[Heddi]

Just because a pap may come back as "not normal" doesn't mean that it's cancer, or PID, or anything bad.

Sometimes they get a bad smear and can't tell what's going on, so they'll have you come back and take another one.

Sometimes, your body may be going through changes like menopause which alter the cellular structure of the cervix & vaginal walls which can give abnormal results, so they'll do another one. Again--abnormal doesn't mean "bad"--it just means "abnormal"

Most women know (but not all) and most offices tell women (but not all) to abstain from sex, douching, and inserting vaginal medications for at least 24-48 hours before having a pap. Even if you had sex 2 days ago, there could have been cellular debris "up there" that gave abnormal results. You're also advised not to get a pap when you're menstruating, although my texbook says that studies have been done and the cervical chages that occur with menstruation often occur 1-2 days before bleeding. So that may be a factor as well.

As the other poster said, the new HIPAA laws really limit what health practitioners can and can't say over the phone. I know that leaving test results on a voice mail/answering machine is a big no-no---it violates your privacy because maybe your son doesn't need to know you went to the GYN, or maybe your husband doesn't need to know, or maybe they all know but the law says no one can assume that they DO know, and that you don't mind if they know, so they opt for speaking to the patient directly, which I think is best in my opinion.

So---most likely they're giving you test results over the phone, and the tests are normal.

If they tell you the tests are abnormal, please PLEASE remember that abnormal is okay, and most likely is just either a processing error, or a biological quirk that caused your cervical/vaginal cells to look funky that one time. THey'll have you come in and do another pap and get you the results of those.

Last quarter, we did OB/GYN and mother-baby care as our clinical focus. I can't TELL you how many women were in the hospital's lab getting re-paps because their pap came back 'abnormal'. There ended up being nothing clinically wrong with these women, but our bodies are different during the months/years of our lives, and it's better to be safe than sorry!