I am just learning about all this myself, but the one thing I would tell you is to make sure your doctor takes this seriously, and make sure to have follow up paps FREQUENTLY. My doctor said once a year was fine, but that wasn't the best advice. I have since learned that a lot of doctors will repeat the pap every three months for the first year or two after the first pap that shows it, and that's what I would insist on. Also, if you have two in a row that show the high risk HPV, I would talk to my doctor about doing a colposcopy so they can examine you better, and maybe even do a biopsy and/or an ECC to check higher up for abnormalities. I'm not trying to scare you, but I received my first abnormal pap in May 2008, which showed high risk HPV. By November I had abnormal cells -- and I only found that out because I went to the doctor due to a possible miscarriage. I had the colpo in December, found out last week that I had adenocarcinoma in situ -- the highest level of precancer -- and had surgery this past Thursday.

Again, I'm not trying to scare you, but I really wish someone had watched me more closely and had told me that this hr HPV is something to keep a very close eye on. Pickle Eyes here is awesome, and her story is very similar to mine -- that a real problem came on VERY quickly. There is supposedly a very low risk of having what I had, something like 1 in 10,000 -- but somebody has to be that one person, and I hope that as many people as possible can catch it before it ever gets serious. Hope this helps.