- Michelle Barrow let cats Cricket and Donut sleep in her bed for years
- Mentioned dull ache in her stomach during a gynaecology appointment
- Doctor pulled out two-inch ball of fur, believing it to be a lost tampon
- Ms Burrows believes cat hairs were pushed into her vagina during sex
- More and more hair got caught in the strings of her IUD coil, creating a ball
But one woman got a rather unexpected - not to mention disgusting - added extra after several nights of snuggling up. Michelle Barrow is mother to Cricket and Donut, who, while cute, shed a torrrent of hair all over the bed.
And while unsightly, she never dreamt what would happen next.
Some time later, during a routine appointment with her gynaecologist, she mentioned the 'dull ache' she'd felt in her abdomen for the last month.
The cause? A two-inch ball of cat hair inside her vagina, apparently.
How? The theory is that cat hairs in the bed became attached to her partner's penis - neither of the couple sleep in underwear - and these had been transferred inside Miss Barrow during sex.
And rather than work their way out, they simply became entangled in her IUD contraceptive coil.
Over time, more and more debris collected, creating a furball inside her.
Michelle Barrow descibed her gruesome ordeal in an article for online women’s magazine xoJane.
Titled: ‘IT HAPPENED TO ME: My Gynecologist Found Hair In My Vagina’, the post has been discussed at length on the internet.
Some sceptics denounced the piece - which is certainly not for the squeamish - as fake.
But Miss Barrow maintained if she was going to make up a story, she definitely wouldn't choose this as a topic.
In the piece, she explains she had an intrauterine device, or IUD, as a form of contraception.
(The small T-shaped plastic and copper device is inserted into the womb. It works by stopping the sperm and egg from surviving in the womb or fallopian tubes and may also prevent a fertilised egg from implanting in the womb.)
During a routine appointment with her gynaecologist, Miss Barrow had mentioned the 'dull ache' she'd felt in her abdomen for the last month (file image)
And when she began suffering pains in her abdominal area, she simply blamed her IUD.
But during her medical appointment, the doctor suspected the ache was due to ovarian cysts and so decided to examine her vagina.
'She began the exam and immediately started muttering what the heck IS that thing?”,' recalled Miss Barrow.
The doctor then asked if she used tampons, to which she replied only very occasionally.
Despite this, the doctor believed some tampon fibres had become tangled up with the strings of the IUD coil.
An IUD has two thin threads that hang down a little way from the womb into the top of the vagina. By feeling these threads, women can can check the device is still in place.
After requesting a long pair of tweezers and scissors, the doctor began trying to dislodge the lump in Miss Barrow's vagina.
Unable to pull it out, the doctor had to resort to cutting it away.
And as the two-inch lump of fur was dragged out Miss Barrow realised, to her horror, it was the same colour as her cat Donut.
Writing on xoJane, she recalled the exact moment the penny dropped.
She said: ‘HOLY SHIT THAT IS CAT HAIR THERE HAS BEEN A BALL OF CAT HAIR INSIDE ME FOR A MONTH THAT IS CAT HAIR AND IT WAS IN MY VAGINA A HAIRBALL HAS BEEN CAUSING MY DISCOMFORT HOLY SHIT AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!’
The doctor sent the specimen to the laboratory, and the results came back as ‘foreign object: forgotten tampon.’
But Ms Barrow has another theory as to what happened.
'My theory is that our sheets are to blame: I'm not very good at making the bed every day so Cricket and Donut have free reign. My fiance and I don't use condoms so it'd be easy for him to unknowingly have some hair on his penis and during sex it'd be easy for that hair to migrate to my strings where everything got all tangled up. The thought still skeeves me out.'
Woman has two-inch ball of CAT HAIR removed from her vagina
What. The. Hell?
