Happy & Healthy

You can die if you leave your tampon in too long

And then we sometimes joke that we accidentally take out two pieces because we forgot to fish out the previous tampon but that can also take very different turns. If that second one doesn't come out and stays in for more than a week, you can get Toxic Shock Syndrome (also known as ’tampon disease’).

The internet tells me: Toxic Shock Syndrome is a serious illness. Bacteria are the cause. It usually involves staphylococci or streptococci. These are bacteria that many healthy people have on their skin, in their nose, or in their vagina. These bacteria produce toxic substances: toxins. If a toxin enters the bloodstream (for example, through a small wound), you can become very ill. The Toxic Shock Syndrome often starts suddenly with fever, vomiting, muscle pain, and sometimes a red rash that looks like sunburn or, as in Emily's case (I'll explain who that is in a moment), bloody discharge and a bloated feeling. Some people can also become very confused.

Emily Pankhurst, a twenty-year-old student from Maidstone, England, experienced this (she blames study stress for forgetting the tampon) and ended up in intensive care. For three days she received different types of antibiotics. ‘The doctors said that if it had stayed in any longer, I would have died.’ Fortunately, she has now fully recovered, but for all the ladies who use tampons: please be careful.