Danielle L • Georgia • 25
So my first period was when I was in the 7th or 8th grade. Being fresh into my teenage years, I was still fairly unfamiliar with the intricacies of my anatomy. I could not, for the life of me, figure out how tampons worked. I was so freaked out by them that I would literally try to wear pads in my bathing suit when at the beach or pool.
Fast forward to a few years later, I’m like 16 and on vacation to my family’s condo in Florida with my parents and best friend Alison. It was that time of month, and I had since warmed up (a little bit) to the dreaded tampon. On one of our vacation days, we headed to Adventure Island, a popular water park about an hour from our condo. I was plugged up by my weird cotton period log and frankly unstoppable. I was feeling kind of saucy, so I decided to take on the tallest water slide in the park, one that dropped straight down.
When I went down the slide, I immediately felt water shooting up in between my legs. I didn’t think anything of it and went about my day. Later, I went to the bathroom to change my tampon and....it was gone. I freaked out, assuming that the water that went in between my legs had flushed it out of my body, and that my bloody tampon was floating somewhere in this water park.
Hours later we were all at dinner and I felt a really weird discomfort in my lower abdomen - that’s when I knew, the tampon had never left my body. I pulled my mom and best friend aside and explained the situation....now it was time to break it to my dad that we had to go to the ER. The look on his face was truly priceless and I’m glad he felt too awkward about the situation to ask any questions.
After waiting in the ER for what felt like an eternity, I explained to a doctor the very embarrassing situation I had found myself in. I won’t go into details, but that mother fucking tampon had lodged itself so far into my body, that the doctor had to remove it with these prongs that still haunt my dreams. Needless to say, I am strictly anti-tampon to this day, only using those little demons when absolutely necessary...and just skipping water parks when it’s that time of month.
