A woman has said she 'nearly died' after her menstrual cup got stuck in her uterus 'for months'.
Nicole Cliffe, from Utah, shared a post on social media, explaining everything she had been through in the last seven months - and it sounds truly shocking.
Nicole explained that she first felt the cup was stuck during her period, but she was unable to remove it herself.
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“I felt it while menstruating because of my cervix being low, soft [and] open,” Nicole wrote.
“I could just stick a pinkie through my cervix and felt it and knew it could only be this.”
Nicole explained that her husband, Steve persuaded her to go to the hospital, where she says staff laughed and said it was 'impossible' for the cup to find its way into the uterus.
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Nicole did have an ultrasound, but while there was 'something' there, it was unclear and doctors thought it could be a fibroid or cyst.
“There was something on the ultrasound but the imaging wasn’t great and they said it was a fibroid or cyst,” she said.
“I made a follow-up to see an ob/gyn. He looked at the ultrasounds and didn’t do a new one, nor did he perform a full pelvic. He laughed at me.”
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For months, Nicole found herself suffering with recurrent urinary tract infections and had regular bleeding in between periods.
“I could have gone septic at any point,” Nicole wrote.
“It ate my fat, my muscles [and] produced a constant fever which gave me my neurological issues, but it became an active emergency about two weeks before I got it out because it shifted and pinned my colon shut.”
Nicole says she believes she was dying, adding: "I knew I was dying for the last month of it & bc I am a noisy person who loves sympathy, you would think I would tell people but instead I was like a sick cat, wanting to die behind a couch or in a closet."
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The mum eventually managed to set the cup free - but it didn't come without a lot of pain.
“Then, during sex, I felt a moment of mind-bending agony, screamed and was in a massive pool of blood,” she said.
“He had popped the suction. I ran to the bathroom, it was halfway out of my cervix. I could not live another moment like this and did my best to fold it and yank it out because I did not believe the ER would do it.
“It was the most painful moment of my life and then it was out.”
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Nicole added: "I would also like to say that even if I HAD been delusional, even if they did think I was suffering from mental illness and not a foreign body in my uterus, this would be a terrible way to treat me/anyone who presented in this way as a patient."
If you do have any concerns that your menstrual cup could be stuck - or even trapped inside your uterus - please seek medical advice as soon as possible.
Lucy Devine