Marlee L • Pennsylvania • 28
I got my period the day before the Fourth of July and we (my family and I) were planning on going to a pool party that evening. I cried to my mom and she told me that if I wanted to swim, I had to use a tampon. I was scared and it felt weird, but I did it. Then the next day, I felt so proud of myself because I thought I was the champion of tampons because I had been successfully using tampons for a whole day.
My mom plays the violin and that evening, she was playing in a Fourth of July concert so she left to go to the concert pretty early in the afternoon. I confidently went to change my tampon and realized that it was stuck. Yes, stuck. I didn’t know this back then, but my hymen was unusually thick and was wrapped around the bottom side of the tampon. It hurt so bad and I was terrified. I sat on the toilet and cried as I imagined the massive surgery that I’d surely have to have to remove the stuck tampon.
With a quarter of the tampon sticking out, still painfully pulling my hymen, I waddled downstairs to find that only my older brother was home. And this was certainly before everyone had cell phones and I could just call and ask my mom what to do. I panicked. Luckily, a couple minutes later, my dad came home and I reluctantly told him what was going on. Then, to my teenage horror, he went to our neighbor’s house to ask her opinion. He came home to me on the toilet, still sobbing in pain and yelled through the shut door, “CINDY SAID TO PROP ONE FOOT UP ON THE TOILET AND IT WILL LOOSEN THE MUSCLES DOWN THERE.”
God bless Cindy because that somehow gave me a new angle to pull out the tampon. And from that day on I knew that no one but the period would ever be champion of tampons.
