by

I’m really, really sorry about the late post. I’m in the middle of finals again, and studying has taken a huge chunk of my time. But the good news is this is the last round of finals I will ever have! And after next week, I’ll officially be done with law school! And then I can sit back and look forward to…to…OMG, I have to study for the freaking bar exam. Two months of cramming dry-ass law! And then I’ll have to take a multi-day exam about that dry-ass law. And after that I’ll probably get a paper cut, which will then become infected with some flesh eating bacteria…and who knows when I’ll ever be able to relax.

Anyway, I wanted to take some time out to tell you all how much I appreciate your patience. Every time finals week comes around, you guys have always been super supportive and really understanding of my time constraints, and I just wanted to thank you all for being so awesome….by telling you a story about explosive diarrhea and menstrual fluid.

First of all, I don’t like having a period every month. I hate how messy it makes my bathroom trips, and how it looks like I’m recreating the prom scene from “Carrie” every time I shower. And the pads–they’re the worst part of getting your period. They always trap all this moisture down there, and it can make the crotch area really humid. Airing it out helps, but how often can a girl really do that? The smell alone could kill someone.

I’ve been trying for years to come up with ways to keep my pad from creating a mini-monsoon season in my pants. I’ve done the bikini wax, thrown in handfuls of baby powder–and while those have helped keep the moisture levels down for an hour or two, the best method has always been the tampon.

Tampons don’t cause moisture buildup because they’re just cotton plugs you shove up your hole–unlike their cousin, the Pad, that prides itself on being a tiny vaginal shroud. Tampons have made my period cycles a lot less unpleasant, but I don’t use them very often because doing so can apparently cause health problems. So I limit myself to only using them after showers because that’s when vaginal humidity is at its highest. When I’m feeling particularly daring, I’ll use one even though I haven’t yet taken a shower. That doesn’t happen very often…nor will it ever happen again. When I deviated from my usual routine last week, it must have made the sanitary napkin gods upset because the decision came back and chomped my ass off.

It all started after I’d eaten something my stomach really did not enjoy…

Lost-Tampon1.jpg

Sidebar: A couple of people told me that pulling it out after I’d just taken a hearty dump was a tampon foul. I don’t know what the big deal is. It’s not like the string was long enough to become contaminated by any fecal matter. What would be the less disgusting alternative? Pulling it out after a pee? Or after handling raw chicken? 

So anyway…I was sitting on the toilet and reaching down to take the tampon out….

LostTampon-2.0.jpg

That’s right: the string was not hanging there! It wasn’t even in the vicinity, and I had looked everywhere twice. I also fished the applicator out of the garbage to see if the tampon was still in it. Who knows? Maybe I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing and threw it away after I unwrapped it? It doesn’t matter anyway. The applicator was empty…and so was my vagina!

As for the freak out, it was fast and it was furious:

LostTampon-2.1.jpg

I’ve never lost a tampon before. It’s always been where I expected it to be–so when it wasn’t in its usual spot this time, I had no idea how to handle it besides scream and flail around. And I was scared. The thing is, I know very, very little about human anatomy. At the very least, you’d think I’d know something about female reproductive organs–but I don’t. In fact, I know so little that what I was really afraid of was the possibility that my tampon had traveled to my stomach and was going to wreak havoc on my internal organs and kill me.

Lost-Tampon-2.2.jpg

So sad…

Luckily, a few quick Google searches helped clear a few things up: (1) a tampon cannot escape into your stomach; (2) if one gets lost in your vagina, you can actually take it out yourself; and (3) the real thing I should have been worrying about was Toxic Shock Syndrome.

Toxic Shock Syndrome, or TSS, is nature’s way of telling women not to put absorbent foreign objects between their legs. Every box of tampons has a warning about TSS printed on it. The label on my box says, “TSS is a rare but serious disease that may cause death. Read and save the enclosed information.” What enclosed information? Oh! They’re talking about that little pamphlet I threw away because I didn’t think I’d ever need it! It probably had some useful stuff in there, like how to tell if you have TSS.

So I went back to Google and did a search on TSS symptoms. I had hoped to achieve some peace of mind by educating myself on the warning signs. The plan was that if I started TSS-ing, I would be able to get medical treatment before it evolved into a serious health issue. Unfortunately, that was one of the worst ideas I’d ever come up with. Here I was, freaking out about a serious disease that I had a chance–however remote–of contracting, and I think I can keep myself calm by looking up its symptoms.

And surprise, surprise, the plan totally backfired. Instead getting peace of mind, I went into hypochondriac mode and started feeling like I was experiencing all the symptoms I read about. Light-headedness? Check. Headache? Double check. I was on the verge of death! And what should you do when you are faced with a life-threatening emergency?

You would probably call an ambulance–which would be the highly sensible thing to do–but I called my sister. I always call her whenever I’m down and in need of advice, and potentially being at risk of getting TSS because my tampon was hiding all up in me was making me down and I needed advice.

My sister’s cell phone, however, went straight to voicemail, so I decided to leave a message:

LostTampon3.jpg

Now I was faced with another problem. I wanted to tell her about the lost tampon debacle, but I didn’t want to actually say “lost tampon.” “Lost tampon” just sounds so gross, doesn’t it? And it’s one of those terms that’s often accompanied by an unwanted mental picture. I didn’t want to imagine what this rogue tampon was starting to look like, and I’m the one who had it stuck in me. So if I was all nasted out by the thought, then my sister was definitely going to feel the same way times 10.

But after two minutes of “uh…uhh…” I still couldn’t think of anything to say. And then, in the spur of the moment, I glanced at my laptop screen.  My browser was still showing the results of my Google search and one was a link to a Wikipedia entry about TSS, along with a few lines of the actual text. So I just read those sentences aloud:

LostTampon4.jpg

Nice…

I hung up the phone and decided I was done playing Hide-and-Seek with a Tampax Pearl. No more freaking out over TSS symptoms or scaring my cats with my constant wails of despair. That tampon was coming out whether it wanted to or not!

The extraction was going to require some handy work, so I threw a dark blue towel on my bedroom carpet, sat down, put a mirror between my legs and–ughhh! *barf* That thing I was looking at was not a vagina! It was a sea cucumber’s mouth, and it was throwing up blood! Mind you, this was all happening during the middle of my period when the flow was at its heaviest. And when I reached in and tried to search around it was like wading through my own body fluid. The whole time I was wishing I was Moses and could part this very red, very smelly sea.

Despite my amateur Carrie-Prejean-doing-Japanese-fetish-porn act, I still could not find that damn tampon! There wasn’t anything in there. Nothing! Just more blood!

It was over for me. That tampon was going to stay in my body, and I was going to get TSS and die.

And then…!

LostTampon5.jpg

It was my sister! She had heard the voicemail I left her and rushed over from work! I was so relieved to see her that I ran out of my room to give her a hug!

LostTampon6.jpg

We later determined that the tampon came out when I was taking a dump. My period was that heavy.

77 thoughts on “”

  1. GL on ur last round of finals 🙂 Too bad I am not finishing school earlier or we can study for bar/boards together hah!Anyway love the illustrations esp regarding the toilet paper roll! I love tampons bc they make my life easier and I just make sure I don’t leave it in too long.

    Reply

  2. Lol I am the same, always freaking out about stuff I may or may not have and running to the internet for peace and serenity, and getting the complete opposite. But seriously, that is scary. I feel the same about my contact lenses getting lost somewhere in my eye ball one day. 😛 Great story as always and lovely illos!Good luck with all your exams!

    Reply

  3. Wow, this post was so awesome. (Although your posts are usually all awesome.)   How did you manage to make such a gross situation so entertaining??  Haha, tip my hat to you.  Good luck with finals! =) 

    Reply

  5. reason #12312421789 why i am happy to be male.cruel trick of nature, imo.  girls really get the short end of the stick on this one 😡  no contest.what do you use to make your drawings?  all those nice geometric shapes :>

    Reply

  8. This has never happened to me. Ever. And may I assure you, that you can only get TSS if you leave the darn thing in there for too long (over four hours, I think?). I refuse to wear pads anymore because of that whole damp smelly debacle that always arises. Additionally, the dampness (or maybe it’s the material of the pad itself?) gives me a rash. Which is SO not fun when you’re in the middle of a period. So yeah. Tampax Pearl all the way. Go me! ^^;p.s. And you can’t find these things very easily here in Melbourne. I had to bring like four gigantic boxes from Costco with me when I moved over here because the ones they sell here do not have applicators. *dies*

    Reply

  16. I love the drawings and the screenshot was very clever! Tampons are nice for the cleanliness of them but it is scary to think of TSS, I remember when women were dying from that before they had a name for it, there  was a certain Tampon related to it that everyone was crazy about “Rely” tampons, around 1979 or so I was a senior in high school,I remember one girl in school died,she had used them. They were super absorbent and later recalled. It is something to be aware of.

    Reply

  18. LMAO, this is the best entry in my subscriptions today. never had this happen to me cuz i don’t use tampons, but sounds like i wouldn’t want to either haha love the pictures!

    Reply

  29. That has totally happened to me before (minus the freak out though, because I felt it coming out of me)!  After that, I always took the tampon out before going #2.  It seems pooping tends to dislodge it even if it doesn’t come all the way out (btw, why are you not supposed to take it out after taking a dump?).  Good luck with finals. I hope both your exams and your period are over swiftly and painlessly.

    Reply

  39. Haha!  I’ve actually never lost a tampon before (and I use them almost exclusively), but once or twice, it fallen come out whilst I was going to the bathroom.  I almost always pull it out first, but a couple times, I forget I even have one in.

    Reply

  40. Your blog is one of the extremely few that’s actually made me laugh out loud and probably the only one that’s reminded me I should seriously refill the toilet paper like right now. Reading your blog has almost become like a TV show where you’ve got a hook of self-depreciative humor and a recurring cast, most of them kittens. Whatever formula you’re doing, keep it up because it’s great! You know, even if it’s in spite of yourself…

    Reply

  44. Goodness, that was quite a tale. When I was young and first started my period I would use pads at night and tampons the rest of the time, but then I decided pads were just too horrible and would use tampons at night as well. Now I use a menstural cup which is really nice because you just put it up in there and it catches the fluid. No risk of TSS and it’s clean like using a tampon is. I’d suggest it because your period sounds, well, quite unpleasant.

    Reply

  45. Growing up with 5 younger sisters I learned about girl stuff, which always seemed so alien. Anyway, I almost didn’t read this post because it was about ‘girl stuff’, but you’ve got a talent for making alomost anything interesting, and when I reached the point where you freaked out your sister I was laughing heartily. RFS, really funny story.

    Reply

  47. Between hysterical fits of laughter, I’d just like to say, in this order:1) Eww.2) I’m SO SORRY for the awkwardness and embarrassment you must have felt!3) Glad you’re okay after all this4) I’m so not hungry anymore.5) ROFLMAO

    Reply

Leave a reply to TheRiverIsEverywhere Cancel reply