A teen with vague pain discovered several tampons under her cervix

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Melanie Galize started suffering from body aches “down south” when she was 14 years old. She said she was treated for Lyme disease, but was afraid to talk about her vaginal distress. It turned out that she had put a tampon under her cervix – probably for two years. Something is loading.

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A young woman who didn’t know she had several tampons inside her at once is sharing her story on TikTok, asking her followers to be kind.

During Melanie Gallese’s sophomore year of high school, she said she began experiencing mysterious body aches along with some “gross” symptoms affecting her nether regions.

At the time, she said she told the doctor about her physical pain but was afraid to talk about her gynecological problems. She was 14 years old.

“The doctor was just kind of ignoring me, and he was mean and creepy,” Galise, now 22, said in the video. “This was really disgusting and embarrassing, and I didn’t want to deal with it.”

Two years later, Gallese said she saw a gynecologist who discovered the source of her discomfort. She said the doctor inserted a speculum, looked inside her vagina, and gasped.

“It’s not what you want to hear,” Galiz said in the video. “You don’t want to hear someone gasp when they look inside you.”

Although she gets nervous sharing what people might see as a “stupid mistake,” Galise told Insider that she believes her story can remind everyone who gets their period to be careful if they choose to use tampons.

The doctor thought her pain was related to Lyme disease

She said that when she was 8 years old, she was treated for Lyme disease. She told Insider she was bitten by a deer tick and had symptoms of Lyme disease — which can include joint pain, headache, fever, and chills.

Lyme disease is notoriously difficult to diagnose with testing, and Galise said her results are inconclusive. But when she told her doctor she had similar body aches at age 14, they assumed it was a bout with Lyme disease.

The medication I prescribed her for Lyme disease helped her pain, but the gynecological symptoms persisted.

Gallese didn’t specify what was wrong with her vaginal area, but said it smelled “very bad” sometimes.

According to Healthline, other signs of a stuck tampon or an object trapped in the vagina may include:

brown, green, yellow, pink, or gray vaginal discharge, foul-smelling vaginal discharge, itching inside your vagina, on your vulva, or redness around your genitals, painful or uncomfortable urination, abdominal or pelvic pain, swelling in or around your vagina, fever up to 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) or higher. She said she had 3 tampons at once

At her gynecologist’s office, Galise learned she had a tampon “stuck horizontally” under her [her] I dont know.”

In the video, she said, “I let it out painfully because it was melting inside of me.” “She kept breaking down and it was an unpleasant experience.”

Gallese said her doctors told her she likely had an infection caused by the stuck tampon, but her gynecologist didn’t believe the same tampon had been in her for two years.

During that two-year period, Galise said, there was one occasion when she pulled out a tampon and another she walked out with it. She said she thinks there may have been three tampons in her at one time, though she has no evidence that the same tampon was stuck throughout the two years of her illness.

“The tampon and I have since parted ways, which is a good thing,” she said.

Looking back, Galise said she believed she didn’t have Lyme disease, and that all of her problems stemmed from the tampon (or tampons) that got stuck.

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