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Topics: Women's Health, Health, Life, Real Life, True Life
Back in October 2023, an American mother-of-two began experiencing a number of what are generally considered the most common - and notoriously agonising - symptoms of a urinary-tract infection.
As such, 30-year-old Anna Osborn was prescribed back-to-back doses of antibiotics for several months.
But no amount of drugs was able to tackle the severe pain and unnerving sickness the Columbus, Indiana woman was battling.
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"Every time I finished an antibiotic dose, I immediately started getting sick again," she recently told press. "I knew my body was fighting something. Doctors just couldn't figure it out."
Osborn - who also feared that the pain could have been caused by an issue surrounding her IUD device - went on to recall: "I was told I must just have a low pain tolerance or I'm being overdramatic. I was just brushed off by a tonne of doctors."
It wasn't until she began feeling as though her 'organs were shutting down', and her agony reached unbearable new extremes, that medics referred the recreational therapist for a vaginal examination, during which a disturbing discovery was made.
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Four months after her initial pain, doctors pulled the remnant of a used tampon out the horrified mum's vagina, believing the sanitary product to have been lodged inside for as long as a year.
"We were both traumatised," Osborn recalled. "[The doctor] saw [the tampon] quite far in there. Body tissue had grown over it.
"My body was trying to heal itself. She had never seen anything like this before.
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"She saw a little piece of something and thought maybe this is the endometriosis. She started pulling on it, then I heard her say 'oh my god, I think it's a tampon'."
The shaken woman continued: "She pulled the entire thing out and we were both in complete shock."
Osborn went on to admit she'd failed to notice the sanitary product during sexual intercourse, revealing it had even flown under the radar during a routine smear test.
Doctors informed her that both the pain and general sickness she'd been experiencing were symptoms of toxic shock syndrome (TTS), as opposed to repeated urinary-tract infections (UTIs).
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Osborn was also told by medics that she'd have to be placed on an immediate month-long treatment plan in order to tackle the condition, being that TTS can be life-threatening.
"I didn't even know TSS was real and actually happened to people," she admitted. "I just asked 'is my body rotting from the inside out'?
"I didn't know what was going to happen to me. It was so scary."
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The mum is now using her experience as a means of warning others about the importance of following their gut when it comes to their health.
"If you feel like something is wrong, then keep pushing," Osborn emphasised.
"I'm glad I didn't just give up and go with the UTI diagnosis. I really felt the need to advocate for myself and my health. It kept me alive. I wouldn't be here otherwise."