Can I go to my regular doctor?

[Polkadot]

I CAN NOT remove this tampon by myself. Please don't respond by giving me an instructional. I have thoroughly researched this topic and have spent the last several hrs. trying EVERYTHING. I have to go to the doctor. Does it have to be a gynecologist? I would much rather see my regular physician. I mean, can just any doctor do this?

[Snorkmaiden]

Yes, a general doctor should be able to do this. They should have enough knowledge of your anatomy.

So I'm assuming it did not help when you sat in the bath and used your fingers to get water into your vaginal canal to wet the tampon? Sorry to hear it. Then yes, going to your doctor is a good solution. No worries, they'll be able to get it out for you.

[Polkadot]

If there is, like, even a remote chance that I already removed it and have total amnesia (I doubt it), is there a way I can tell on my own?

[Polkadot]

I'm sorry to keep pestering you about this but I completely don't understand how this is happening. I don't flush tampons so I actually just went and sifted thru the garbage and found the applicator but not the tampon so the amnesia possibility is completely ruled out. I felt for it with my fingers umpteen trillion times and reached up until I could feel my cervix but can't detect any sign of it at all. I looked with a mirror and definitely the string is nowhere in sight. What is up with this?????

[Snorkmaiden]

If you can't see the string and can't feel the tampon, but you can feel your cervix, then I'd say the chance that it's still inside your vagina is very small indeed. Is there any change that you may have lost it, for example during a bowel movement?

[Polkadot]

It was one of those ultra-absorbent kinds, like, the kind that doesn't just slip out and I'd JUST put it in but I did go to the bathroom. Maybe I didn't insert it up high enough and it fell out into the toilet? I hadn't thought of that. My flow was really heavy tho and now it's mostly stopped but maybe just a coincidence.

[Heather]

Amnesia isn't something that just crops up out of nowhere for people: that usually occurs only due to severe trauma, usually head trauma.

But a tampon can only go as far back as the back of the vaginal canal, which, when people aren't sexually aroused, is only a few inches deep. So, if you are bearing down and sliding a lubricated finger into your vagina and not feeling a tampon, it is most likely because one isn't in there.

[Polkadot]

So the it-fell-out-into-the-toilet-and-got-flushed conspiracy theory is most probable here. I am breathing a huge sigh of relief. Thanks a lot.

[Heather]

Well, I think what is MOST likely is that -- as we sometimes will do with things that are rote habits -- you took it out and just don't remember. People don't have to have amnesia just to space things out sometimes!