My life on the run is over

I’d been on the run for months before I gave up and turned myself in. They’d pursued me relentlessly: first by email, then letter, then text. Eventually they started calling me, and after I’d been foolish enough to answer the first phone call I saved the number to my contact list as ‘‘ignore’’, and did.

It still didn’t stop. When they rang my mother to try and track me down, I began to think about changing my name; starting a new life in the mountains behind my house; changing my identity. I was worried that even if I did, they’d send an owl bearing an invitation not to Hogwarts but to a speculum.

Finally, they wore me down. I was never going to get away from them, and my time on the lam was over. I handed myself in early one Friday morning, my running days done. ‘‘I’m here for my smear,’’ I said.

Cervical smears are nobody’s idea of a good time, but the Government has announced a plan that’ll go some way towards making the procedure a bit less irksome.

Experts have been calling for self-swabbing to become the norm for years, and for years it’s been knocked back. Rather than a doctor or nurse using a speculum and scraping cells from the cervix, a self-test lets women take a swab from their vagina to pick up the HPV virus strains most likely to cause cancer. If they’re not present, there’s no need for a cervical smear.

The Government now reckons we’ll be in business from 2023, and the associate health minister says the move is ‘‘life-saving and a ‘‘game changer’’. It’s predicted the tests will prevent an additional 400 cervical cancers in 17 years, saving around 138 additional lives: great news, except for the time it’s taken to deliver it.

By the time I showed up for my most recent appointment, my smear was years overdue and neither the nurse nor doctor asked for an explanation. They were just happy I’d finally turned up. So was I. The procedure was quick, pretty painless and, as always happens, I left the clinic wondering what on earth had kept me away for so long.

At the risk of sounding like a smear- splainer, it’s not just modesty behind our reluctance.

For some women a smear is only a slightly uncomfortable five-yearly nuisance; for others it’s an insurmountable task. Distrust of a medical system that’s failed family members for generations is only one of the reasons many women avoid them: cultural beliefs, pain, shame, and poverty are a few more.

And although there’s no doubt those of us with just a bit of embarrassment standing in the way are privileged, it’s still not a walk in the park. If it’s hard for me – someone who shamelessly got her breasts out for a mammogram video – no wonder it’s impossible for others.

Just 72 per cent of eligible women are screened each year, and of those 78 per cent are European. Only 62 per cent of eligible Ma¯ ori, 69 per cent of Pasifika, and 59 per cent of Asian women get a test.

Ma¯ ori and Pacific women are dying of cervical cancer at two to three times the rate of other women, yet the self-tests are already in place in Australia, the UK, Ireland and several other European countries.

Like me, the Government has been on the run for years and, while we’re happy it’s finally showed up, let’s not lose sight of how long and how hard these tests have been fought for, and the women we’ve lost while we waited.

There’s no running away from that.