I Can’t Remember If I Put a Tampon In and I’m Worried It’s Lost Inside Me…. What Do I Do?
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Save for the string, an inserted tampon is out of sight and (hopefully) out of mind. After all, you shouldn’t feel a tampon doing its job. While that’s usually a great thing, it can become a problem if a tampon is so unnoticeable you forget if you even put one in or can’t remember having taken your last one out.
Gynecologists recommend swapping out your tampon at least every four to eight hours to reduce your risk of irritation, infection, and a rare but dangerous condition called toxic shock syndrome (a complication of an infection, in which bacteria release toxins into the bloodstream). So if you suddenly can’t remember if you’ve put in a tampon or suspect you did but can’t see or access the string, it’s only natural to start worrying about whether that thing is festering inside you.
Well, here’s not just one but two pieces of good news: If you did put a tampon in it will still be in your vaginal canal (where you can likely reach it with a finger), and it’s highly unlikely that a tampon will be forgotten forever because your body will give you some warning signs, Alyssa Dweck, MD, FACOG, a New York–based gynecologist, tells SELF.
Here, two ob-gyns share exactly what to do the next time you have tampon amnesia.
What to do if you can’t remember if you put a tampon in
Your first step is to really, truly not panic, Kameelah Phillips, MD, a New York–based ob-gyn and Organon health partner, tells SELF. This scenario happens often, according to the experts we spoke with, and isn’t typically a major health risk.
Once you take a deep breath, both Dr. Phillips and Dr. Dweck recommend a simple finger sweep: Trim any sharp nail edges on one of your index fingers and wash your hands thoroughly. Then, take a seat on the toilet, put a bit of lube on the opening of your vagina, and gently insert that finger, sweeping around to see if you feel anything spongy or mobile, or that you can hook your finger around and remove. Note that if you’re touching your cervix—which feels kinda like the tip of your nose (it’s also made of cartilage)—there’s probably no tampon in there, Dr. Dweck says.
If you’re at all squeamish about this or you feel something in there but you can’t remove it, call the search off and schedule an appointment with your ob-gyn for that day or the next day (let them know what’s going on so they can try to squeeze you in). “A few extra hours are not going to impact your health to a detriment,” Dr. Phillips says. In the meantime, Dr. Dweck advises not putting anything else in your vagina or having penetrative sex.
Your ob-gyn can “use a little instrument to fish out a tampon if there is one, and it literally takes 10 seconds,” Dr. Dweck says.
So…can a tampon ever get lost inside you?
Stuck or tough to reach? Yes. But lost? Nope. At the top of your vaginal canal is your cervix, which has a pinpoint opening (a.k.a. the external cervical os) that dilates when you’re pregnant and your body is preparing to give birth, Dr. Dweck explains. But otherwise, the external os is only a couple of millimeters open—not nearly big enough to fit a tampon. (And there’s nowhere else inside you a tampon can go.)
Rather, the tampon can potentially get wedged in the upper part of your vaginal canal and be tougher to access, particularly if the string somehow comes off. In some cases, it can also “become malpositioned or maneuver such that it becomes horizontal and the string gets retained inside as well, making it a little bit tougher to remove,” Dr. Dweck says.
What happens if you forget about an inserted tampon?
The most universal sign of a forgotten tampon is a strong smell, according to Dr. Dweck, which will show up within a day or two of the tampon being inside you. She says that some people can actually have no other symptoms for weeks, even as they’re going about their business—putting in another tampon, having sex, exercising—so it’s usually a “putrid” odor that’s the giveaway.
As for why? “All the natural secretions that are usually helpful to naturally cleanse the vagina are being absorbed into that tampon,” Dr. Dweck explains. It’s possible for things to smell fishy, too, like what you might experience with bacterial vaginosis (BV), given the odor can also be caused by bacterial growth. (Bacteria love warm, moist places like a vagina.)
Sometimes, but not always, that odor will come with a “foul” vaginal discharge, too, Dr. Phillips says. In that case, it’s important to get checked out by an ob-gyn—particularly if a finger sweep yields no tampon—because you may have an infection like BV, which is typically easy to treat.
It’s also possible to feel some pain or discomfort or pressure in your pelvis when you pee depending on how the tampon is lodged, Dr. Dweck says. And “the longer that a tampon is in your vagina, the more likely it is that toxic shock could occur,” she says, with the caveat that it is very rare (it only affects one in every 100,000 people). It’s really important to see a doctor if you have any symptoms beyond vaginal discomfort or discharge, including a fever or other flu-like symptoms, as well as a rash that may show up on your hands and feet and does not fade when you roll a drinking glass over it (similar to a meningitis rash).
Putting aside the unlikely case of toxic shock, however, the good news is that once you or a doctor removes the tampon, your symptoms will usually subside within a few hours, Dr. Dweck says.
And if this tends to happen a lot or you just don’t use tampons often and suspect you might forget about putting one in, Dr. Phillips recommends popping a quick note in your phone whenever you insert one (it can just say, “tampon placed”) and then erasing it when you take it out. This way, you’ll always know if there’s one in there—and you won’t have to go fishing for nothing.
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Originally Appeared on SELF
