Rhiannon Ingle
Most of us, I'd hope, do a pretty decent job at keeping tabs on our tampons, namely, remembering to take them out at the right times.
However, it's clear that some of us are better at doing so than others after one woman accidentally left her tampon inside for way longer than you're supposed to.
Now, the NHS advises that a tampon should not be left in for more than eight hours at a time. But Melanie Galeaz has shared exactly what happened after she left a tampon inside her body for two entire years when she was a teenager.
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The woman, from Massachusetts, revealed the full details of her experience after sharing an initial video admitting her massive mistake.
Alongside a video of her mouthing along to Lana Del Rey, Galeaz wrote: "When I accidentally left a tampon in for two years, but I was literally just a teenage girl."
"Not my proudest moment," she added, with her admission prompting dozens of questions from baffled TikTok users.
After being asked how she didn't get Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS), a life-threatening condition caused by bacteria getting into the body and releasing harmful toxins, Galeaz offered up more details about her experience.
She began by explaining that she had previously suffered Lyme disease as a child after being bitten by a tick. She experienced all the symptoms, but the results of the tests were 'confusing' and unclear.
She was given the necessary medication and the symptoms went away, and it wasn't until some time later when she was in high school, that she began experiencing 'pains' in her body and some 'gross stuff happening down south'.
Galeaz admitted she was embarrassed to tell the doctor what was happening, and hoped instead that what she was feeling was related to her previous Lyme disease diagnosis.
She took the medicine she had been previously recommended and it helped with the pain, but over the following two years, her problems 'down south' continued.
Eventually, Galeaz went to the gynaecologist, who 'crank[ed] her open', looked inside her vagina and 'gasped'.
"She says, 'you have a tampon stuck horizontally under your cervix'," she recalled.
Though the gynaecologist struggled to believe the tampon could have been in there for two years, doctors suggested it might have caused an infection, which led to the pain Galeaz was experiencing.
She assured viewers that she and the tampon have since 'parted ways', though TikTokers couldn't get over her shocking story.
"What I don't understand is how you didn't feel it. Like ???," one person wrote, while another commented: "I left one in for 2 weeks before on accident and it smelt HORRENDOUS. That’s crazy."
Tampon manufacturers advise that a tampon should not be left in for more than eight hours, the NHS explains. TSS has been linked to women using tampons in rare cases.