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A-Culturated

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Crying in the Waiting Room

11 min readMay 7, 2025

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A cartoon of an exhausted mother on the phone on a couch breastfeeding and pumping, with the text of phone menus in the background
Artwork by Kelsey Breseman

When you’re on the UK’s National Health Services (NHS), well care is aggressively scheduled. You’ll get a text that you are “invited” for X type of care at such and such time and date. Call if you need to reschedule.

As an American, I find this charming — much better than several hours’ phone hold trying to get an appointment.

As a new mother, I wasn’t excited to get a text “inviting” me to a pap smear two months postpartum.

I was tempted to blow it off — I was tired, baby needed me, we were packing for America — but it’s important to look after my own health, so I accepted the appointment.

Robert took the day off work to watch the baby, and I waddled my still-healing body to the local clinic.

“Oh, hey,” I laughed when I saw the practice nurse. “I just saw you last week for my son’s two-month vaccinations!”

“Oh.” The practice nurse paused. “We can’t do a pap smear until you’re at least three months postpartum.”

So she rescheduled for three months (just before my trip to the States) and sent me home.

A month later, back at the clinic, she asked if I wanted the standard blood tests that go with the pap smear.

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A-Culturated
A-Culturated

Published in A-Culturated

For all the readers and writers in between cultures

Kelsey Breseman
Kelsey Breseman

Written by Kelsey Breseman

An adventurer, engineer, indigenous Alaskan writing the nitty gritty. See my recent posts for free on Substack: https://ifoundtheme.substack.com/