Exclusive: Women are experiencing sexual paralysis, pain and trauma after a common cervical procedure
Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash
By Anna Freeman
The LLETZ (LEEP) procedure is performed to remove abnormal cervical cells that could become cancerous if left untreated, but a group of women says sexism in medicine failed to prepare them for the sometimes traumatic side effects
On 2 August 2010, Asha*, a 33-year-old woman living in Hackney, east London, visited Homerton University Hospital for a ‘minor’ procedure to remove abnormal cells from her cervix. A routine smear test and colposcopy the previous month showed a cellular change that threatened cervical cancer if left untreated. She was scheduled for a loop excision of the transformative zone (LLETZ), or a LEEP as it is commonly known, as a preventative measure. Although slightly apprehensive about the process at first, Asha was assured there was ‘no risk at all’ involved with the LLETZ, and no side effects should be considered. But in the following weeks after the procedure, she realised something was wrong; like a huge part of herself had been cut away, leaving behind a host of unanswered questions and a spiral of isolation and depression.
‘The second I had the procedure my whole life changed, and my identity changed,’ Asha recalls, ‘It’s almost like I’m looking at a stranger. There are no words that can explain the joy this removed from my life.’ Asha says she began to notice that her sex drive had near diminished and her ability to enjoy sexual pleasure had disappeared since the LLETZ had been performed. She could no longer feel stimulation in her vagina and cervix, except for a small area around the clitoris, and her connection to her sexual self was severed in every way. Whereas before Asha possessed a ‘powerful sexuality that lived in so many ways’, the procedure left Asha paralysed, as if every sexual thought, fantasy and experience had been completely numbed. ‘I never thought that magical part of me could be taken away; this utterly broke me,’ she says.
