Jake Massey
Doctors were left stunned when they found a two-year-old tampon inside a patient.
Melanie Galeaz, from Massachusetts, USA, opened up about her painful ordeal on TikTok, which left viewers baffled.
Watch her recount the saga here:
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Melanie shared a video in which she said she'd left a tampon inside herself for two years as a teenager, admitting it was not her 'proudest moment'.
The video went viral, amassing more than 16 million views, and a lot of people had questions, which she duly answered.
After being asked how she didn't get Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS) - a life-threatening condition caused by bacteria getting into the body and releasing harmful toxins - Melanie offered up more details about her experience.
She began by explaining that she had suffered from Lyme disease as a child after being bitten by a tick. She experienced all the symptoms, but the results of the tests were 'confusing' and unclear.
She was given the necessary medication and the symptoms went away, but it wasn't until some time later when she was in high school that she began experiencing 'pains' in her body, as well as some 'gross stuff happening down south'.
Melanie admitted she was embarrassed to tell the doctor what was happening, and hoped instead that what she was feeling was related to her previous Lyme disease diagnosis.
She took the medicine she had been previously recommended and it helped with the pain, but over the following two years, her problems 'down south' continued.
Eventually, she went to the gynaecologist, who 'crank[ed] her open', looked inside her vagina and 'gasped'.
"She says, 'you have a tampon stuck horizontally under your cervix'," she recalled.
Though the gynaecologist struggled to believe the tampon could have been in there for two years, doctors suggested it might have caused an infection, which led to the pain she was experiencing.
She assured viewers that she and the tampon have since 'parted ways', though TikTokers couldn't get over her shocking story.
"what i don't understand is how you didn't feel it. like ???," one person wrote.
Another commented: "I left one in for 2 weeks in before on accident and it smelt HORRENDOUS. that's crazy."
Tampon manufacturers advise that a tampon should not be left in for more than eight hours, the NHS states.
TSS has been linked to women using tampons in some rare cases.