Savannah Miller, who appeared on the 7th season of Netflix’s The Circle, ‘forgot’ she put in a tampon and walked around with it inside her for a month. Read on to know her “actually traumatising” experience.
A reality TV star’s cautionary tale might make you think twice about using tampons — or at least about taking them out on time. Savannah Miller, who appeared on the seventh season of Netflix’s The Circle, recently opened up about her ‘traumatising’ experience when she was 22 years old.
Speaking to the New York Post, Savannah discussed her “truly humbling experience” in college. Having worn a tampon towards the end of her period to prevent any unwanted “spillage”, the then college student forgot she had used a tampon, and by the next day — it was gone.
Warnings are often made about wearing tampons overnight but for Savannah, this turned into an entire month. She told The Post: “I forgot I put it in, and because there was no blood and the string had disappeared, I didn’t see it.”
However, over the next few days, Savannah started experiencing symptoms — itchiness, a general feeling of illness, and a bad smell. “It smelled like a rat crawled inside of me while I was sleeping and died,” shared the reality star, admitting she began feeling self-conscious about the rank odour in every class.
Now 24, Savannah reveals she chalked it up to an “old period” smell and continued using new tampons — most likely pushing the existing one further and further into her vagina.
Unable to understand what was wrong and the cause behind the bad smell, Savannah found herself frequenting the on-campus clinic multiple times, however initial examinations failed to find anything wrong. The clinic even ran STD panels on her and they all came back normal, with none of them showing any abnormalities.
Savannah added: “They thought it was just BV [bacterial vaginosis], but I knew there was no way people walked around with BV smelling like this.”
Then, at her third doctor’s appointment, the medical professionals noted some cotton particles appearing in Savannah’s urine sample, which led to the million dollar question of whether she had a tampon inside her.
Savannah recalls telling the doctors she didn’t think so — but couldn’t rule out the possibility. “I was desperate to make the smell go away.” Eventually, the clinic ended up finding the tampon, which the reality star claims was “so far up in my cervix there was no shot I was gonna see it.”
Joking that the doctors had to “fish it out of my ovaries”, Savannah was one of the lucky ones. Displaying no symptoms of toxic shock syndrome (TSS) which is a lethal bacterial infection — she was put on antibiotics to be on the safe side.
Toxic shock syndrome (TSS) occurs when bacteria release toxins into the bloodstream, potentially causing severe complications like organ failure or even death. It’s rare — affecting 1 in 100,000 people — but became linked to tampon use in the ’90s. Today, tampon packaging includes TSS warnings and recommends changing tampons every eight hours.
Savannah is keeping her humour alive though. The reality TV star recently posted a video on TikTok making light of her experience, captioning the post: “Too toxic for toxic shock syndrome I guess. Hopefully this lands on my 85% girl following.”
The background song of her viral TikTok? Taylor Swift’s I Forgot That You Existed.