This Woman’s Tampon Removal Story Is Your Actual Worst Nightmare

If you’ve ever used tampons we’ll bet at some point or another you’ve left yours in a little too long and had to do a mad dash to the toilets to change it. Maybe you’ve even experienced that moment of utter panic where you can’t find the string and for a brief second think that it’s somehow become lost inside of you.

Whatever your negative experiences with tampons though, we’ll bet they pale in comparison’s to Alex LaFata’s story.

Writing in an article for Elite Daily, Alex explains that after, ahem, fooling around with a guy her tampon became lodged inside her vagina. Yes, we said lodged.

After some “excavating” as Alex puts it (read: using two fingers, while propping her leg up on the toilet seat to try and locate said tampon) she soon realised that it was well and truly stuck.

“I spread my legs, stuck two fingers inside my vagina and wiggled them around to search for the string, thinking about how silly I was to assume for even a second that the tampon would not be easily accessible,” Alex explains. “But then I didn’t feel a string.”

And that’s when the panic set in. Alex hotfoots it to her local A&E with her mum where she’s seen by a doctor.

It looked exactly like I pictured: a dead rabbit’s foot.

“He spread my legs and peered inside me. I looked for any changes in his expression that may have indicated that he found something, but he was putting on his best poker face, so I leaned back and tried to calm my nerves,” she explains.

“Finally, I felt something cold, and then a light tug,” she continues. “Did you find something?” I asked nervously. “Yup!” he said, holding up the mummified tampon. It looked exactly like I pictured: a dead rabbit’s foot.

And it gets worse when Alex asks her doctor how far up the tampon was stuck. “Oh, you were never going to get that yourself,” he replies. “It was all the way at your cervix, and the string was pretty tightly wrapped around the cotton. You must have been going at it really vigorously.”

MAJOR. CRINGE.

To top it all off, as Alex lives in the US she had to pay $900 for the whole horrible experience. Yikes.

But while her story is certainly a cringey one, it’s by no means an isolated tale. In fact, some of our very readers shared some of their most mortifying period-related stories here. It’s also important to remember that lost tampons can lead to Toxic Shock Syndrome, as UK student Emily Pankhurst found out when she left hers in for 9 days and subsequently spent 3 days in intensive care.

The takeaway? If you’re using tampons be super, super careful. And if you’re messing around with a new fella when you’ve got one in? Maybe take it out first or wait it out until Aunty Flo is no longer in town, yeah?

Psst! You can read Alex’s full story here.

• menstruation
• Period
• tampons