First up, something nice. Paperless Post - which I lust after because I have seen every Nancy Meyers movie - has a new Flyer service and it’s free. If you’re planning a Christmas work lunch try it. It’s easy use, cute, collects the RSVPs for you, and cute.
A few months ago I wrote about the cervical check scandal.
I hate that - calling it a scandal. A scandal is an embarrassing man in the public eye cheating on the mother of his children with a younger woman. A scandal is when those on the sidelines in the know can breathe a sigh of relief and tell people, finally, everything they know. It’s encrypted messaging apps erupting after a screenshot. It’s the most dangerous gal you know not giving a shit and burning bridges. There is a television show called Scandal and it’s about two heterosexual people who ride. The synopsis says it’s about politics, but I’ve watched the shipper videos and Scandal is about a woman with beautiful coats riding a man with faint eyebrows.
What happened to the women affected by the cervical check shambles was beyond a scandal. It was horrific. My lungs feel like cotton wool when I think about it. Google news the issue every few days. It hasn’t ended. I’m a terrible divil for overusing falling dominoes as a metaphor, but the cervical check fuck ups are that. Each tumbling click is another person’s trust in the health service diminished to the quick. Or another death.
I had to present at a clinic in The Coombe for a smear this week. Someone along the line had informed me it was another colposcopy but when I arrived it was otherwise. I’ll follow up about that. I checked in, I waited, I went in and undressed in a small cubicle and sat in the stirrups and tolerated the speculum. When you’ve had as many medical professionals as I have explore down there, you become eerily chill with a stranger inserting into you a metal duckbill tool developed by a plantation doctor and tested on slaves. A swab was taken and the only way I can describe the sensation to those without a womb is imagine you’ve been abducted by aliens and the one with a guitar player’s nail wants to see what all the fuss is about and you cause no fuss because you just want to get sent back to earth.
As I rolled my 60 deniers back on and dumped the hospital gown I was requested to wear over my conservative forest green dress - I was at a meeting for lunch - I asked the nurse about my results. When will I get them? Two months, she said. Wow, I said. Last year the shit news arrived in time for Christmas. A comment on the backlogs followed. Only as I walked in the cold on the wide and curved Dublin 8 street my temper abandoned latency. I spoke to my camera about the delay and a friend messaged me that evening. She’s been waiting three months. She’s stressed. She’s worried. We’re both pissed off.
How in God’s name is this seen as a normal practice? Women over a certain age have spent this year in the eye of a haunting. I’m sorry to sound like a politician in opposition - let’s be honest, I’m not, I don’t have a demure bone left - but why can’t anyone fix the fucking problem? Why can’t someone give a shit?
Go ahead and explain how logistics work, but while you’re at it remind me why women and our health aren’t a priority.
Thank you for reading. If you want to read exclusive content, from the archives and in the future, subscribe now for $30. That’s for a year and encourages me to keep on typing. This week I wrote about how a solo trip to Madrid was not the wonderful weekend of personal growth I thought it would be.