Okay, I know that some of you will have seen the title of this blog, and thought that I have finally lost the plot, and am taking my love of all things welfare-related too far (In particular I imagine my boyfriend may be quite perturbed).

But I have a confession to make: for someone who is always talking about sexual health, and destigmatising it, I’ve procrastinated about taking myself for a trip to the G.U.M (Genito-Urinary Medicine) clinic. So for my new year’s resolution I decided to practice what I preach and go for a check up. And if blogging about my experience means that even one student or student officer goes and gets tested, it will be worth it!

So first things first, trying to get an appointment. Before Christmas I attempted to organise an NEC trip to the GUM clinic as several of my colleagues had asked me to. However it was impossible to get appointments on the day the 5 of us going were free, and the local walk in centre opening times were very short and limited. The only clinic that was open wasn’t taken on new patients, so our trip was sadly post-poned.

The DoH website www.playingsafely.co.uk lists all your local clinics and what services they offer, and whilst it’s a good idea and easy to find, it seems to list every local chemist where you can buy condoms. It took a good half hour of trawling through it and several phone calls before I managed to find a clinic providing STI testing. When I eventually did, appointments could only be booked between 1-3pm, and so I was forced to keep pressing the redial button for the best part of an hour before I could finally get through. I spend lots of my time campaigning around sexual health, working with sexual health organisations, and I would say I’m more equipped than your average young women in knowing how to get an appointment, but it really did take a lot of perseverance and under other circumstances I might well have simply given up.

But when I did get through, I managed to get an appointment the following week, and the lady on the phone was really nice and helpful, even giving me directions to get there. So the following Tuesday for my appointment I went. The clinic was split into a male and female clinic, which put me at ease. The woman on the reception was really helpful, giving me the choice of coming back to collect my results or have them posted out. I got them posted and they said it could take up to two weeks but actually it was only just over a week. My appointment was on time which was a relief given some of the waiting time horror stories I’d heard in the past. The doctor and nurse I saw were both female, which is generally standard practice and again but me at ease. Now I’m going to draw the line at going into graphic detail, but my appointment was quick and easy and certainly not anything to worry about. And I felt very pleased with myself afterwards for biting the bullet and going!

So I guess in conclusion, whilst I have some concerns about the ease of accessing or even finding out where local G.U.M clinics are, overall I had a positive experience. We should all look after our sexual health just like we look after our general health, through regular check-ups even when there isn’t anything wrong- as the doctor said to me, that’s what they’re there for. So if like me you’ve been putting off going for a while, but know you kind of should, I hope this blog will spur you on to (attempt) to get an appointment today.

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