How I Got So Far in Life is Beyond Me

Soooo...today I learned that I have been using tampons incorrectly for the past ten years.

Incorrectly, you say? How does one use them "incorrectly?"

Well.

An important thing to note before I get into this hilariously improbable story is that I was raised in a school district with abstinence-only education. You know, the kind that tells you that women are 90% emotional, 10% sexual, and men are 90% sexual, 10% emotional, and that married couples (who have the best sex, fyi) complete each other 100% (because 100% plus 100% equals...100%?), and that women who have sex before marriage are like used lollipops (or toothbrushes, depending on which teacher you had), and EW, who would want to use something that's already been all mucked up by someone else's germs!

But, I digress.

For the past three weeks, I have been taking antibiotics for a sinus infection. The first week, I was on regular amoxicillin, but when that failed to take away sinus pressure, my doctor put me on fancypants amoxicillin, which seemed, for the most part, to take the headaches away. At least the worst of them. Unbeknownst to me, antibiotics can kill not only the bacteria or whatever in your face, but in your vagina as well--good bacteria that keeps the yeast at bay. Or something. Long story short, I woke up one day with vag fire. Don't think that's a thing? Try being on antibiotics for three weeks and then ignoring the initial symptoms of a yeast infection because you weren't really aware that was a thing and then realize that your hoo-ha is on FUCKING DEATH FIRE. It is unpleasant as shit.

After using the necessary and awkward medication suppository-thingmajig, I felt pretty icky, and also the vag fire wasn't completely put out, so I had to call off work. I told my boss that I had a negative reaction to a medication (which is totes true) and that I was pretty sure I'd need to go to the ER (which I THOUGHT was true because I was convinced that I was going to die). Luckily, I realized that I would rather die than pay $100 to sit in an ER for three hours, so I opted to drug the shit out of myself and sleep on the couch all day. Yaaaaaay Valium.

That morning, I asked my mother, a nurse, when it would be okay for me to pee. To which she was all, o.O face? And then proceeded to tell me that I knew that your pee hole and vag hole are two separate things, right?

To which I was all, O_O ?!?!?!

And then she was like lollollollollolsrsly? wtf are they teaching you in school?

And then I was like...lollipop, grumble, going back to bed. But not before I pee out of a hole I was previously unaware that existed.

So I sleep all day, as previously stated, and then texted my friend Sarah about the magical pee hole discovery. I'm not sure how we got on the topic, but I mentioned that with this anti fungal stuff, you can't use a tampon, which I thought was kinda weird since the medicine gets put all the way UP there.

And that's when I started to wonder: why, if you could use pads to make sure the medicine doesn't fuck up your cute and expensive underwear, why couldn't you use a tampon? It's not like a tampon goes UP, it just kinda hangs out in between your lips, so to speak.

God. Damn. It.

So I asked Sarah: have I been using tampons wrong for the past like, ten years?

Sarah: *Confused on how you would use something like tampons incorrectly*

Me: They don't go, like, ALL THE WAY up, do they?

Sarah: *facepalm*

Sarah was like, WTF, dude, they come with directions! And I was like, no stupid, I just checked my box and they do NOT.

Then I checked a different box. One that I apparently had NOT thrown the directions away.

Turns out, she was right. They DO go all the way up. And you CAN pee with tampons in.

I'd always kind of wondered why some women I knew bitched about cardboard applicators. Now I know.