A woman has revealed the shocking moment doctors discovered that she had left her tampon in for two years.
Author Melanie Galeaz took to TikTok to raise awareness about the dangers of Toxic Shock Syndrome after revealing her experience with tampon use.
The content creator explained that when she was a teenager, she began experiencing pain and strange gynaecological symptoms.
However, doctors thought it may have been Lyme disease, as she had been bitten by a tick.
But two years later, she discovered the shocking truth.
“When I was little, I got bitten by a deer tick, and had all the symptoms of Lyme disease,” she said in the clip.
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“But the tests were kind of confusing if I had it or not, but since I had all the symptoms and got bitten, the doctors gave my the meds, sent me on my way and I was fine.
“Then my sophomore year of high school, I started getting all these pains in my body and some really gross stuff was happening down south.
“I went to the doctor, but I didn’t really mention the issues happening down south, which I know was my fault.
“But the doctor was really disregarding me and he was being mean and scary. I was really embarrassed, I was about 14.
“It was really disgusting and embarrassing, and I just didn’t want to deal with it. But I kind of just hoped that it was something related to Lyme disease, and that I could just ignore it with the meds and it would go away.”
Melanie explained that she took the medication given to her for the tick bite, and her pain was getting better.
But the gynaecological issues she was experiencing were not improving.
“When I get stressed about something, I ignore it,” she said.
“But that never works, especially in this case. Two years later, in my senior year, I was still having problems.
“I finally go to the doctor again and I went to the gyno. She cranked me open, looks and she gasps.
“I’m like ‘well, that’s not what you want to hear’. Then she says, ‘you have a tampon stuck horizontally under your cervix’.
“Taking it out hurt, because it was dissolving inside me. It kept breaking apart and it was such an unpleasant experience.”
She said that looking back, she thinks perhaps she never actually had Lyme disease, and that all her issues had stemmed down to the tampon being stuck.
“I don’t think I even had Lyme disease,” she said.
“Doctors think I had some sort of infection in my body from the tampon, which makes sense.
“For everyone asking about the smell, I come from a family that absolutely would have destroyed me if it smelled bad. It didn’t.
“At times, it did smell bad, and I was very sad thinking that I just smelled like that naturally, so I figured out ways to mask it.”
Melanie also added that at one stage, she actually had three tampons inside her.
“During that two year period I took one out, and another came out with it,” she said.
“I have no idea how long that one was in for. So I had one in me for two years, one in me for an unknown amount of time, and one in for about 8 hours.”
Earlier this year, Love Island star Maura Higgins shared her experience of leaving a tampon in for months.
The 31-year-old spoke about her terrifying experience on a British talk show in a bid to raise awareness of toxic shock syndrome.
The Irish woman contracted the disease after she forgot to take a tampon out, which caused her to become increasingly sick.
Maura said she couldn’t understand what was causing her illness, but was shocked after a doctor discovered the three-month-old tampon stuck up against her cervix.
“I did have a very bad experience,” she told ITV’s Shopping With Keith Lemon.
“I’m not a doctor, I don’t know much about that [TSS], but I know you are not meant to leave a tampon inside for more than, I think it’s nine hours, I think that’s the max.
“When the doctor found it, it was stuck to my cervix. I was so ill.
“I did not know what was going on.”