The doctor moved closer to Ellie. I couldn't see very well from my side angle, but this part seemed rather straightforward. He spent about 30 seconds looking at her, and then said “OK, everything looks fine on the outside here. Let's go ahead and take care of checking on the inside.”

I heard the doctor open a drawer in the exam table. “Due to a supply issue, we don't unfortunately have a plastic speculum to use right now, so we'll have to use a metal one. It might be just a bit on the cold side.” The nurse walked over with a long tube of KY Jelly. I got a short look at the shiny metal speculum as she put a small amount of lubricant on the tool, which the doctor spread around a bit on the surface.

“Alright, now Ellie, this is going to feel like a lot of pressure, but try to keep your muscles relaxed, and this will just take a couple minutes.” He once again looked between her legs. “Here we go.. just going to gently slide this in.. a bit of pressure here.”

I looked at Ellie, who continued staring up at the ceiling, as if trying to ignore that a metal instrument was being placed into her vagina. The doctor spoke again. “Now I'm just going to open this a bit so I can see your cervix and do the pap smear." He continued with the opening of the tool. Ellie shut her eyes and wrinkled up her face a bit.

The doctor looked up and said “Are you doing OK?” Ellie continued staring at the ceiling and quietly responded. “I'm OK. That just feels like a lot of pressure.”

“Yep. Alright,” the doctor said. "First I'm just going a little plastic spatula to take some cells from the outside of your cervix.” The nurse handed him a plastic tool with a weirdly shaped end, and he moved in and used it to take the sample. He handed the brush to the nurse, who handed him another tool that looked like a plastic stick with a brush on one end.

“Now I'm going to take a sample from the inner part of your cervix. This might pinch just a little bit.” He took the brush stick and started doing the sample. Ellie let out a quiet “ahhhh, oww” sound. “Sorry about that, that can be a bit uncomfortable, but we're all done with that, and we can take the speculum out now." I watched as he removed the metal speculum and handed it to the nurse, who put it into the sink.