If you have a vagina, you know things can ebb and flow in your lower region. Maybe you wake up with heinous cramps and wonder if your period is en route—or perhaps your cycle is off-kilter, and you can’t tell whether stress, a new prescription, or something else entirely is to blame. What you might not realize is, the mystery cause could be a serious condition like cervical cancer, Monica Avila, MD, MPH, a gynecological oncologist in the Gynecologic Oncology Program at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, tells SELF.
Cervical cancer—caused almost entirely by human papillomavirus (HPV)—was once the number one cancer-related killer of women. But thanks to screening (via Pap smears and HPV tests) and the HPV vaccine, cases have dropped dramatically. Still, the vaccine doesn’t shield against every single strain, and not everyone has had the shots.
Plus, in the early stages, a lot of people with cervical cancer don’t feel or see any symptoms at all, Dr. Avila notes. That’s because the clump of cancerous cells tends to be too small to make itself known until it’s progressed quite a bit, Ryan Kahn, MD, MHS, a gynecologic oncologist at Miami Cancer Institute, part of Baptist Health South Florida, tells SELF. It’s the reason he stresses maintaining regular gyno visits, where screening can pick up asymptomatic or pre-cancer cases, even if you’re feeling just fine (more on this below).
Once cervical cancer develops to the point of triggering noticeable symptoms, it can be “kind of insidious,” Dr. Avila says. You might associate the typical indicators, like random spotting or heavy bleeding, “with simply having a period,” she says. Read on to learn about the often subtle signs of cervical cancer and when to pay a visit to your ob-gyn.
1. Pain or bleeding during or after sex
After Aisha McClellan, 39, from Chapel Hill, North Carolina bled after sex for about 10 minutes back in 2016, she didn’t think much of it at first. But when it happened again a second and third time, McClellan went to a local clinic for help—and was initially tested for STIs. Her results came back negative, but the nurse practitioner assumed some kind of infection was at play and prescribed antibiotics. Despite finishing the course of her meds, the bleeding didn’t stop, and McClellan became abnormally fatigued and her lower back ached. That worried her, so she went back to the clinic and asked for a pelvic exam. “They said my cervix looked angry and inflamed,” she recalls.
