Girls thread cont.

Here it is: http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1089/jwh.2010.2349

Oh also if there is to be any STD testing, that will either happen during the speculum exam or you'll have blood drawn before or after.

*Earlier this year I think there were some studies published saying this isn't really necessary or useful so maybe this will go away.

I certainly hope so -- this is always the worst part for me, it is very painful. I don't know if I have a sensitive abdomen or what, but the rest of the day I hurt. And it's not because of one particular doctor, this has happened with three different doctors.

last time i went to the GUM clinic for a checkup (i'm not going to lie, a large part of the reason for going was that i'd recently been reading a bunch of US feminist blog posts about gyno appts and thought 'hm, i have never done this', and discovered that was cos we don't really do regular gyno checkups on the NHS unless there's a specific problem/question) i managed to convince the doctor to do the smear test at the same time. which was good as now i don't have to put my feet in stirrups again for, ooh, a good couple of years.

Do you get regular Pap smears under the NHS?

I certainly do! I get regular reminder letters from my GP! (But I think I may be substantially older than Cis. They only kicked in at A Certain Age. though I can't remember what that age was, LOL senility.)

Yeah, you do from 20 onwards iirc. I avoided mine for a few years after the first letter but started getting more and more stern letters about it and finally went in my mid-20s.

I think they get more frequent when you are "a certain age", though; in 20s and early 30s it is every 3 years (or is it 2?) unless you have a suspicious/inconclusive reading, in which case it's yearly or 6 monthly instead.

No breast checks until post-menopause, though. Would sort of appreciate an exam because when I do a self-check I always feel like I have no idea what I'm looking for.

ACOG came out with guidelines recently saying every two years when you're under 30, and every three years if you're over 30 and haven't had any abnormal paps - http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/pap-smear/MY00090/DSECTION=why-its-done

(Are you getting the toilet paper Imodium ad on that page? That is horrible and LOL.)

I always assume that w/ breast self-checks I'll know it if I feel it? Otherwise, I would probably be freaking out about everything all the time, since not only do I not really know what I'm looking for, they also always give the disclaimer about normal changes due to hormonal fluctuations, etc.

aforementioned gyno convo that happened in original ilx inspired me to get my first gyno checkup in eons. thanks, girls thread!

jenny set me up with Ye Olde Feminist Health Collective and it was rly nice to get some answers to some little nagging questions i'd had for yrs.

I'll know it if I feel it
i assume the same--i've found a lump which was difft than my usual lumpy breast tissue. it's small but definitely a lump. (i forgot to mention it to my doc but then gyno found it--benign cyst, no big deal)

So I got my Bass Rachel Antonoff heeled saddle shoes for X-Mas - THEY ARE AMAZING. SO comfy and adorbs!!

pics or gtfo

I have to buy shoes now and this gives me TEH PH34R. How the hell do you make shoe shopping enjoyable or even bearable?

And I've already had to *go* shoe shopping once already this month bcuz Cornwall destroyed my hiking boots so I bought wellies in Penzance but wellies work in places where everything is made of mud or sand, but do not work on the hard concrete of London ;_;

No more shitty cheap vegan shoes made of hemp and cardboard that fall apart after 3 months of use, I need to get shoes that are made of IRON and BOOTSTRAPS and will last for at least a year so I don't have to do this again. HALP ME GIRLS. #ShoeCrisis

I'm dreadful with shoes. I buy a pair of Docs, a pair of Kumfs maryjanes (orthopedic sandals basically, my feet are effed), a pair of sneakers and a pair of knee high boots for winter and thats it.

All flat - cant wear/walk in any kind of heel. Makes being girly in shoes... impossible basically :/

I don't know if my feet are just really wide, but I p much just can't wear girly shoes. Like, literally, I just cannot get my feet into them.

I'd buy shoes mail order to dispense with all the hassle, but the last time I did that, the shoes were just not wide enough (even after stretching) and I could hardly send them back after being stretched.

Maybe I should just give up and get a pair of Docs. They're supposed to be p much indestructible - are they? I need a pair of boots that will stand up to a year or so of hard London walking. A friend told me to get these Spanish goth boots - called New Rock or something like that? But again, that mail order problem.

I should get off the internet and go up to Camden but just... ugh.

Docs are pretty rad. An indispensable part of my youth - I think my massive steel toe-capped ones lasted me for three years or so as a teen, and probably only not longer as I started wearing trainers instead.

I feel the shoe woes. I think I've complained about my stupid feet plenty so I won't go into it again but I'm basically like Trayce. All I want is a brogan, a work shoe (plus a pair of interview shoes), sneakers, and snow boots and I'll call it a day.

Actually, lately all I want is for it to be climatically and socially acceptable for me to wear Crocs (the big, ugly kind) every day since for the past few months, those have been the only shoes that are actually comfortable.

I did make a feeble stab at buying rain boots yesterday but I got overwhelmed and frustrated and gave up.

And of course it's raining today and, probably for the same reason only Crocs are comfortable now (I'm guessing some mystery toe joint ailment, probably exacerbated by the cold, rainy weather and the fact that my orthotics are wearing out), my beloved rainy weather shoes* feel just miserable to wear so I'm really wishing I had bought the pair of rain boots I was thinking about buying but didn't because they were really stupid looking.

Which isn't to say they wouldn't hurt my feet eventually, but they would at least hurt slightly differently.

*Well-waterproof Fluevogs, like so:

http://www.fluevog.com/code/images/colour_image/0000000019/composite.jpg

This is very silly but I want to post a picture of shoes and can't work out how to do it using Dropbox. When I copy the link to my pic from the Dropbox site, it doesn't end in .jpeg. (I have posted in WDYLL but can't remember how I did it).

Jenny, I really sympathize. It's not like feet are something you can avoid bashing around. I feel lucky not to have this problem. Instead I am just crap about what shoes look good with what.

Thanks for the sympathy.

I'm going to complain a little bit more and then drop it, I promise: I got ready early today because I am leaving work early, basically as soon as I finish a few things, so my plan was to get in early, get done, and GTFO BUT since I have to wear the Pain Shoes, I'm really reluctant to walk to the train (about a half mile) so I'm waiting for a bus, but the bus isn't coming for like 15 minutes, all of which pretty much negates my whole "getting to work early plan."

I simply cannot cope with my feet hurting. Any shoe that hurts my feet if I wear it more than twice goes straight to the charity shop to hurt someone else's feet. I walk far too much to ever put up with uncomfortable shoes.

This is why, once I find a pair of comfortable shoes, I tend to wear them until they literally fall apart. My hiking boots, it turned out, were only held together with mud, and split when the sea got at them. ;_;

I am also having the same massive desire to cut off ALL OF MY HAIR that I was experiencing last year on Girl Thread on Proper ILX.

Except this year, I don't want a bob or an Eton Crop, I want a French Resistance hairstyle like at the bottom of this page

http://www.joeri.net/retro/fashion/gentstop.htm

I'm a massive hippie and I want to keep my hair long and flowing for ever and ever but I'm starting to recede at my temples (!!!!!!! - I know, but it happened to my mum, too) and I am trying to face facts that I should really do something about it, but really, who wants to have to get a proper hairstyle trimmed every three months or whatever when I can just throw it in a ponytail and forget it exists?

Also I would probably look like a potato.

Something like this should be do-able but leave you enough hair to have something going on when you don't pomade it back?

http://www.joeri.net/retro/fashion/menhair2.jpg

But other than the haircut, you can start by wearing that hat like 3" lower over your forehead! Yes, it sucks for visibility. I don't know why people put up with it for so long. But almost no hat looks good when it's barely perched on yr crown and about to fall off.

Yeah, that was exactly the photo I was liking, because his hair is quite wavy and mine is quite wavy so it would probably work. And I originally had the hat pulled much lower on my brow (which is how I wear it when I'm trying to keep out the coldy freezes and rain, because really it's about head protection and it totally works) but it looked kinda dumb like that in photos, also I was mainly wearing it to try and keep my voluminous quantity of hair from flopping out and ruining the effect.

have you considered just getting men's shoes?

I usually do. But shopping for them is still a pain in the arse.

is it that what you want doesn't exist or that what you like doesn't fit?

i don't like shoe-shopping either

I love it. I go to Nordstrom Rack sometimes just to try on shoes... with no intention to buy.

What I want exists, it's just that I hate having to go into town because London sucks and I'm annoyed before I even get to the shop because, tourists, and then be given the side-eye by shop assistants because I'm shopping in the wrong section, and then try on at least 3 or 4 pairs because translating sizing between men's and women's shoes is unreliable and it might be a 6 1/2 or a 7 or an 8, and get given the side-eye again for wasting their time and I feel like a cow if they don't fit my calves because mens calves are skinnier, then looking in all those mirrors I start to feel fat and unattractive and hate myself which is not something that I really like to feel and just ... ugh. I will wrap plastic bags around my feet and carry on wearing the shoes with holes in them.

i guess the one positive thing about shoes - for me - is that i am at peace with my feet: they are wide and flat and look like flesh-covered rectangular robot feet, but finding shoes is mainly a functional issue as opposed to an aesthetic/self-esteem one. Sometimes i feel that way about clothes, makeup, the other adornments -- but not as consistently as i do about feet/shoes.

I was looking round the sale section of a shoe website earlier, and had specified some other search term which took away the choice of men's vs women's, and everything I liked enough to click on turned out to be a man's shoe, and therefore only start at size 6, whereas I'm a size 5. Hmf.

(and because of my wide feet I am actually a size 3 lengthways but a 5 width-wise or something, so going up another size = bad fit. and also the skinny man-calves thing, my fat ankles often don't even fit into women's boots. and argh etc.)

i have similar boot issues -- i look for boots that lace up.

I have exactly one pair of boots that I can actually lace up over my fat calves. It's so frustrating. But at least I have big feet, it must be so annoying that they're all just one size too big.

Which is why I'm so annoyed that my original pair of motorcycle boots died - they were German manboots for fat old man bikers which actually fit my calves! And then the heel on one of them got all squishy and weird after breaking on some sharp Cornish rocks. I have tried cutting the other heel in the same way to get it to collapse down so at least they're at the same height, but no dice.

German biker boots sound awesome. Actually I'm reminded that the army surplus shop has sturdy-looking boots in a wide range of sizes. I think I even tried some on before and found that they fitted. Must go back.

yeah, try there! - i got mine at military surplus stores

Actually I should go to the FORUM MAN SHOP, which sounds like it should be a gay baths, but it's not, even thought it's right next to a gay baths, it's a shop selling steel toed boots and high visibility gear for ppl who work on actual trains and construction crews and the like. THEY probably have boots that will be indestructible, though I do get odd looks / completely ignored by sales people if I go in there.

that also sounds like a good bet! i had good luck in a similar type of place in finding sturdy work pants for doing construction that fit me.

Oh god I hate shoe shopping. I went in the posh shoe shop and they had ~beautiful~ brown engineering type boots, but they were £135 which is too steep for my blood. But then I went to the FORUM MENS PROTECTIVE FOOTGEAR shop which was brilliant, loads of amazing shoes in the more reasonable £30 - £60 range and I was just trying to figure out which kind of steel toed boot to buy when the little man at the desk announced he was closing for lunch and I should come back in an hour. Sigh. Which I might not do, I might just lie here and look at that bottle of whisky until I give in and start drinking it.

Problem is, what I really really want is an "engineers boot" or "motorcycle boot" with buckles or steel hoops and straps for pulling up by. And I saw the PERFECT pair in Penzance for only fifty pounds!!!!! but I didn't buy them because I didn't want to have to lug them home on the train.

But these are all either lace-ups or chelsea boot style with the elasticated web on the sides - now I love me some chelsea boots, but I know those elasticated webs get holes in them and give way after about a year.

re: SHOES/boots, i just need to say that i bought Blundstones in the fall and they make me wish i'd been wearing them my whole life. i wore docs very often from age 14-26 (plus more girlie shoes occasionally) and docs are far less comfortable than blundstones (apparently there is some even 'better' similar shoe that can only be go in australia but i don't know what that is). anyway, what i'm saying is that if you want a black boot and walk a lot and have wide feet you should get these boots because they are awesome.

the elastic webs on the sides of blundstones take forever to fall apart - i know people who have had their boots for 10+ years

and they are unisex.
that is my sales pitch! lol

Well, I ended up getting a pair of very chunky charcoal brown suede lace-up steel-toed work boots of some brand I have now forgotten. I had to try on about 3 different brands to get one that was the right length for my foot without being *too* wide (which is a problem I'd much rather have than too narrow.) But the funny thing is, it has been so long since I bought a pair of proper boots (i.e. not rubber boots or stupid flimsy vegan boots made of hemp and cardboard) that I forgot, with steel toed boots, you don't break them in, so much as they break you in, and my ankles got ripped to shreds before I taped them up. I know this will pass. So I'm pretty happy.

Might still go to Camden and see if I can find motorcycle/engineers boots, or I might persist with trying to break the heel of the left boot of the pair I have.