As If Periods Aren't Bad Enough....

The cramps, the blood, the headaches, the ruining of pretty underwear, the desire to eat your weight in chocolate and tortilla chips... and now MOLDY TAMPONS?!

My Moldy Tampon

This morning I waddled off to the bathroom, after a long slumber in my bed, trying to further prevent any bleeding through my pajama pants. Much to my surprise, I didn't bleed through my pants (yes! a rare first!). I sat down to pee, and reached for a tampon out of my bathroom drawer. I grabbed my trusty Tampax Pearl, as I always use, and have for years. Side note: when these first came out over a decade ago, an entire booze filled brunch with two of my friends was devoted to the discussion of how much we loved them. Smooth applicator, no pinching (ouch!), and the braided string?! Revolutionary! But am I feeling the love for Pearls right now? No, no I am not. I will take this opportunity to step down from my "pearl girl" status....

And why is that?

MOLD.

That's right people. Mold on my tampon.

As I unwrapped the tampon, and held it for a split second, my eye caught something gray and dark at the end of my supposed-to-be-pristine-white-clean tampon.

WTF.

So in my horror, I frantically took the entire tampon out, and much to my horror, there is mold over it!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

So now I'm left with wondering why I haven't fully inspected every tampon I've ever inserted, especially the ones I used previously from this box. My poor lady parts. I hope I didn't expose them to mold.

I could vomit.

And the company's response? Sorry. We will mail you a coupon for a new box. What?!!?! And of course they want the tampon back to run tests. But when I asked if I find out the results of those test? No, I won't be given that information. Of course not. How I wish I had access to some kind of lab to see what nasty FUNK is on this thing.

Ladies, don't we deserve some kind of guarantee that products we are inserting INSIDE of our bodies are safe for our use?! It's not like we use tampons because we want to... WE HAVE TO! (And don't even throw that whole 'you could use a pad instead' thing at me. Some of us need to wear tampons. End of story.)