Procedure is over.
Thanks to all you TFP ladies for support!!
Details below, if you want to know or if it's helpful to you when you have to go through it, yourself.
It really wasn't as bad as I thought. At all. It really was like an extended pap-smear.
I took my 4 Advil about 45 mins before the appointment, and then they made me wait about 45 minutes more AFTER my appointment time (just to get in the freakin' exam room!). Apparently they schedule all the colposcopies on the same day in the summer, since the campus health services only has one *real* doctor who can do them.
I'm lying there on the table, half-naked (with that lovely sheet on my legs) for about 15 minutes, when FINALLY the doctor comes in and proceeds to foul up his computer. He starts venting about how they schedule him for all these colpos at the same time, yadda yadda, whining about his job basically. I was like, uh... about my cervix? He and the nurse mess around with the computer, he restarts it, and the colposcope is finally ready to go. I lie back and do my meditation breathing, prepared for the worst.
Which doesn't happen. I honestly don't remember feeling anything particularly painful... I mean, it was certainly uncomfortable, and there was definitely a lot of weird pinching/brushing sensations... but maybe they used some kind of surface anesthesia, because even when he took the biopsy (endocervical cutterage?) I didn't feel the tool in there.
However, what I found most interesting was the front-seat view of my cervix. With the camera on, I was watching the whole thing on the computer screen... fascinating! It was like a big pink mouth, though of course it's actually tiny in comparison to the q-tips and such that he was putting in there (which made me more terrified of child birth than anything
)
The doctor said there was very little area of concern (once he put the vinegar on), though it does look indicative of low-grade HPV. :P But, at this point I am simply glad that it's nothing more serious, since that's the real issue of HPV (esp. since ktspktsp and I don't plan on changing partners anytime!). If I don't have warts, and if it's not high-grade/cancerous, then I'm happy.
I'll get the official results back in a couple of weeks.
The only bad part: NO SEX FOR A WEEK!
Well, the nurse actually said two weeks, but the doctor said that since it was such a small biopsy, a week would be fine.