Toxic Shock Puns

Some backstory. I'm a gamer nerd, and have been for a long time. This story happened about 16-17 years ago, when World of Warcraft was still relatively new (and very, very popular). Some of you in the know can probably see where this is going.

One of the characters you can play in World of Warcraft is the Shaman. They get various elemental attacks, with some of them being called "shocks." Things like Earth Shock, Flame Shock, Frost Shock, etc. The other important thing to know is sometimes, voice chat can get really strange.

So, I'm sitting with some friends in a voice chat, not really paying attention while I collect bear testicles or whatever other thing I did for years of my life in that godforsaken game. Some of the women in the chat apparently got into a conversation about menstrual products, where one mentions they don't use tampons as they are, "Terrified of toxic shock." Me, being a stupid man piped up and asked, "Is that a new Shaman skill?" With absolutely, 100%, genuine curiosity.

Queue total silence for about 15 seconds, then every woman both laughing and calling me an idiot. My girlfriend at the time, who didn't play but was in the room, heard it and also started laughing at me.

I like to imagine I'm better these days, but I figured I would share my personal shame. Hope you had as much fun reading as I had taking a trip down memory lane.

I think I remember reading somewhere that TSS is incredibly rare and when it does happen it’s not often caused by wearing a tampon too long, even though that can happen. Is this true?

TW: blood, period, miscarriage.

Crazy story of the importance of listening to your intuition and heeding omens.

Yesterday, I was driving to work when an owl flew across my field of vision, perched in a tree, and stared at me. It was just barely dawn, and the owl was little more than a silhouette (yes it was an owl, I’m a biologist). I took note of it as an omen and went on.

I have been on my period for a couple days and yesterday, after seeing the owl, my cramps intensified to be extreme for the entirety of the day. Ibuprofen (which always helps) wasn’t aiding me at all. When I came home from work, I told my partner I thought there was something very wrong.

Being that America’s healthcare system is royally fucked, I elected not to go to the doctor because $$$.

A couple hours after, I went to go use the restroom and dispose of my current tampon (don’t @ me with tampon alternatives alright. I’ve used the diva cup and it gives me the most horrific cramps). I sat down to pee after disposing of the tampon and noticed that a HUGE glob was coming out of me. I first thought I had miscarried again. I have miscarried once before without knowing I was pregnant, but this time I knew I hadn’t miscarried because I’ve had my tubes removed.

I peered in the toilet, and low and behold, it was a giant, festering glob of tampon from a previous tampon two days before. When I had taken the rest of this tampon out on Saturday, I did notice that it was kind of shredded up. I had had a public emergency that day so I had used a cheap tampon brand.

Two days later, that festering, disgusting piece of cotton came from my body. I may have been experiencing minor symptoms of toxic shock and if it had not come out, I could have progressed into worsening toxic shock and potentially died.

When it came out, all my pain subsided. I was back to normal.

Owls are often omens of death and/or a cue to listen to your intuition. I should have taken sick time yesterday (I had considered this multiple times), gone home, taken my mf tampon out, and try to figure out what was going on. Listen to your intuition and for my homies with uteruses, please don’t use cheap tampons and make sure everything is alright down there when you feel like something is wrong.

Love this group. Thanks for reading 🤍✨

I’m curious. Can I just rinse it in hot water every time it’s in use? Will it really make a difference?

Edit: hot water and soap*

Edit 2: Thank you for the comments! apparently, you are supposed to only boil in between periods, and my knowledge most likely got mixed up over the years. Happy to no longer be confused! Safe cycles everyone ☮️✌️

Hi.

I made a post a few days ago on this subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/WomensHealth/comments/qyb9ru/miscarriage_or_decidual_cast/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

It didn’t get many answers but the comments I did get were very kind! And I think this is just another example of how hard it is to understand what the heck is going on with our bodies. I wanted to leave it up though and re-share the story in case someone else goes through something similar.

But long story short, after weeks of bleeding despite being on birth control, I discovered that I had actually miscarried. But since I didn’t know I was pregnant or that I had miscarried, the lingering tissue caused toxic shock. At the time of the miscarriage, I hadn’t had sex in 4 months. Please look at the linked post to see when I first started having issues. But here I will try to give a time line of events.

Pre-conception: I am on the NuvaRing. With the ring you are to keep it in 4 weeks and take it out the 5th week for your menstrual cycle. However, you do have the option of leaving it in and skipping your cycle. I would leave it in. But confession time: I was not as tight with my calendar as I should have been. I would often go 6-7 weeks before I’d remember to switch to a new ring. Sometimes, I’d lose the ring & if I didn’t have a backup, it would take 2-3 days to replace.

Anyway, my partner is long distance. About two months ago, I started having brown watery discharge. It smelt awful. However, I thought nothing of it. I had just recently moved, was very stressed, and not taking care of myself. I just thought the brown discharge was a consequence of my unhealthy behaviors. I thought I just needed more pineapple juice.

The discharge stopped but eventually I started having some slight pain while peeing. And while peeing, it became difficult to finish. Like I’d pee, and moments after standing back up, more pee would rush out of me.

Then the bleeding started. For about a week, I was spotting. It was very light and painless. I did have the ring inserted so I had no reason to believe it was a period. I did that thing where I thought if I pretended I wasn’t menstruating, it would go away. It did not and after a week and a half, it had grown from spotting to steady bleeding in need of pads. Around this time, my actual menstruation week had finally arrived so I removed the NuvaRing and it was covered in bloody strings. The bleeding was still steady and relatively

So I'm playing as Jacob and Esau. I got diplopia and used it on Toxic Shock to duplicate it. I take it with both characters. Does it proc two times in this scenario? Or still only once?

My god it's strong. >_<

Two nights ago I left a tampon in for a little over 8 hours (like 8 hours and 50 minutes), i fell asleep with it in on accident. That following morning and today I’ve also had a sore throat, high temperature, and felt really nauseous/just out of it in general. And I’ve heard a symptom of TSS can be tu, I’m so scared I’m going to get sick

Is this just anxiety or could I actually be at risk for TSS? Idc if i die from toxic shock i just don’t wanna throw up.

Hello. 27F 5’5” and 130#.

I had a miscarriage in early November, had an ultrasound that confirmed everything passed. I got my first period back on Monday. Have been changing tampons regularly. On Tuesday I found out I was also exposed to covid on Monday. I’m good about changing tampons on time and haven’t had any in for more than 6 hours. The past two days I’ve felt kind of sickly. My period has stopped and I haven’t used tampons in two days now (which is typical my cycle runs around 4-5 days). I’ve been having some general fatigue, headaches, a low grade fever, no coughing or anything yet, no chills, but very restless during sleep, stomach feels nauseous, mild diarrhea( which could also be contributed to drinking lactose thanks to a milk hot chocolate my grandpa gave me), some mild muscle aches and my throat feels phlegmy. I’ve also had some general discomfort including in my stomach area. My throat looks a bit irritated. No redness besides that.

I’m not sure if I should stop at urgent care or go to the hospital.

Call that a man hole cover

As someone who used 9gag for memes, coming to reddit and seeing it’s how friendly, human and normal the reddit community is extremely refreshing.

9gag’s community is can be described as:

• toxic
• closed minded
• pessimistic
• racist
• garbage mindsets that are quick to judge and hostile

I thought this was just the internet being the internet - and since 9gagers are significant European (who I thought are nice and rational as I look up to Europeans), I thought they had weren’t trying to be scummy - but are just honest.

Coming to reddit and it’s various subreddits - it’s extremely refreshing especially on my mental health that the community is rational, friendly and open minded.

I would normally brace myself going to the comments to take it with a grain of salt and expect degenerate behaviour. I did that impulsively browsing Reddits comments and I was literally shocked by people apologising, being kind and open minded.

Morale of the story - 9gag is an extremely toxic place, stay away!

In the dead of the night around 12;30am , i was awoken by thumping of my downstairs neighbor, it took me a while to register...... what that sound was... then after a while of questioning if it was just in my head or not, i got up and went near the noise to see what it was about.... then i was hearing the words of ''Help me!!, i cant breathe, someone help me please'' I was in complete shock. I woke up my mom to see if i was just hearing things, and she also looked confused and also heard it. I went to search for my phone to call 911 in sheer panic, my mom stopped noticed i was looking for my phone and said '' no, don't get involved, someone else will help her'

, this def brought me flashbacks which nearly made me blow up on her because its like hello how can you ignore this?? again she kept banging on the walls screaming and pleading for 'help, someone help!' this went on for about 15 minutes or so, i was panicking trying to find my phone and mom kept trying to sway me from not calling the cops and to not do it,i had to keep lecturing her and nearly arguing with her which was taking up time!

By the time i got back into reality and away from my mom , i tried to find a spot to try to call where she couldnt hear me, I was gonna call 911 and dialed the number until i heard the sound of paramedics breaking down the door downstairs to help her and take her to the hospital

Mom kept saying 'dont worry, some other neighbor will take care of it,' it turns out nobody helped her or called until one guy coming late from work heard and, called the fire department.

Just now, one of the management people in my building, came and they got into the topic of the neighbor incident i heard the management lady say '' its such a shame no one in the building called to help the lady who had a stroke, some guy on the fourth floor coming home called the department ) I heard my mom saying how she was sleeping and how I woke her up, and then telling the management lady how she was scared to call and thought maybe there was someone with a gun, then lady told her ' it doesn't matter, if you hear someone call for help you call 911,' then she left abruptly in disbelief at what she just heard my mom said. I wish my mom just didn't say anything, she just made things worse by saying that, just dont say anything! now they will also look at me in disgust and disbelief as well. Then mom just got so mad at her saying it was not her responsibility to call 911, how more people live in the

Now before you immediately downvote me, understand that I won the PvP battle and that I have been playing this game for a little over a year.

Yesterday night I decided to go onto galleon open crew, which I rarely do because I play with my friends instead. When I spawned into a server with very good players on my galleon and also a FotD. We stocked up for a bit, raised an emissary and then sailed to ForD.

Upon arrival there were three ships involved, no alliances, all fighting to sink each other to then finish the fort. There was a reapers galleon that had been stacking the fort that had sunk the other two ships as well. When we pulled up we sunk the reaper galleon, killed them after they backspawned then sailed to the fort because we had drifted a bit away in the battle.

Then the reaper boat returned again after about 4 rounds of the fort. We sunk them in less than a minute and then fought their back spawn in about five minutes.

This was repeated two more times before they gave up. At this point my friend had messaged me, so I went to check it out by pressing the home button. However at the exact same time one of the members of the reaper galleon invited me and I accidentally joined the party. I left immediately because I did not want him to start saying slurs to me.

About two minutes pass and he messages me "How's California", the state I live in. I dismiss it as a lucky guess. He then messages me "you're getting ddossed now kk" or something like that. I immediately report him for unsportsmanlike conduct and report that message as harassment because he attempted to ddoss me. Then the worst part comes, he messages me my IP number and that's when my Wi-Fi shut off for about two minutes.

I figured everything out, it's all good now, but I am left wondering why? Why does losing a FotD matter so much to you that you ddoss me. That's all for my rant thanks for reading.

TLDR: I sunk a galleon fourt times and then one ddossed me because I accidentally joined his party.

23F. Height is 5'2. I'm roughly 120 pounds. White. No recreational drugs. Drink maybe twice every few weeks. Medications Zoloft 50 and Yasmin birth control.

Primary complaint:

Headache and nausea following tampon use. Duration 2 hours today, and 6 hours last night.

I usually use pads but I've been thinking about swapping to tampons. Never really used them before but I put an OB brand scent free tampon in last night and then developed a headache and nausea within an hour or two. Didn't think anything of it because it wasn't that bad. Swapped to a pad before bed and woke up fine this morning. Put a tampon in at 1pm today and within half an hour had a headache and nausea again. Now I'm pretty sure its related to the tampon but is it TSS? Allergy? I never kept a tampon in for more than 4 hours and I used the lowest absorbency possible for my flow. I'm confused and a bit freaked out. Also, I don't have insurance so I'd like to avoid a doctor if its possible

I’m not sure if this is the right place to ask about this but I’m super scared I’m going to develop TSS. I went out drinking for the first time last night, had a lot to drink and ended up forgetting to change my tampon. I had it in for about 10 hours and the internet says 8-12 hours is okay at a push, but I was wondering if anyone had any first-hand experience? Thank you! :)

20F, 5ft 5, 145lbs I’ve been on vacation poolside for about a week (on my period) and have been using tampons way more often that I usually do. I’m using regular absorbency and taking them out pretty frequently 2-5hrs as I don’t like how they feel and only wear them when I’ll go for a swim or something.

I’ve noticed they’ve been coming out dry for the last couple days resulting in some light pain/discomfort and am worried these dry tampons will result in tears and leftover fibers that could lead to Toxic Shock Syndrome.

Should I be worried ?

22f

Let me start out by saying that I have a history of OCD and other anxiety disorders, and panicking about something unlikely (including health problems) is fairly common for me. HOWEVER

I think I may have given myself TSS, should I be on high alert for the next 5 days since that’s the timeframe when symptoms seem to appear?

My mom convinced me to wear a super tampon even though I was at the end of my period so I wouldn’t get blood on my sheets at night. I had a very dry tampon in for about 6 hours and when I took it out, it was painful and the area is still tender and raw feeling even hours later and it just feels very off. I’m afraid I could have gotten cuts there and that I might get TSS within the next 5 days, but my mom won’t let me call my doctor or even entertain the possibility that it might have happened. I can’t even get help for my panic about it without getting screamed at. I’ve taken out dry tampons before, but somehow this feels different- my womb hurts, my vagina has pain, etc. Whether bc of reality or OCD who knows. I read that dry tampons that are too big carry big risk for TSS when there are abrasions.

So should I be on high alert for TSS in the next five days? I’m sick to my stomach and my heart won’t stop racing I’m so scared.

Two friends of mine were talking about toxic shock syndrome the other day and it was the first time I’d heard of it.