A faithful reader shared that she recently read an article about at-home pap smear tests.
Without even considering the gymnastics required to execute this maneuver, let's remember that OB-GYNs go through multiple years of higher education to learn to do this effectively, safely, and correctly. My medical training exclusively consists of playing the board game, "Operation" and watching The Pitt.
This disturbing revelation follows my complete horror a few years ago when I discovered there were at-home colon cancer screening tests (looking at you, Cologuard). I began reading about these when I heard them advertised on NPR and then abruptly stopped when I learned what they entailed (tail...heh). Look, the reason you go to a medical facility for a colonoscopy is so you don't have to deal with any of this. In a medical facility, you take a nice nap, wake up, refuse eye contact with your doctor, and hope everything is normal so you don't have to endure the shame for another ten years when that doctor has hopefully retired. You know, the way god intended. It is far superior to the at-home method.
The real kicker here is that with the insanely high and rising costs of health insurance, we are now being directed toward doing much of our own medical testing. So without going too far into a spiral of how we're paying so much more for so much less, I've decided to focus on the potential upsides of where taking on our own medical care could potentially lead, including, but not limited to, the following:
- Prescribing prescription drugs. >sings< "Popular. I'm going to be pop-uuu-lar."
- Using medical lingo. I look forward to tossing around phrasing such as "looks like a case of borborygmi secondary to an acute abdominal catastrophe" instead of saying "I have a rumbly in my tumbly."
- Requiring people to refer to me as "Dr." My parents will be instantly prouder and I cannot wait to attend my next high school reunion for the name tag alone.
- Wearing scrubs. The adult garanimals. Sign me up!
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