Years ago, a guy friend told me about an additional use scenario for tampons in the Norwegian military: when female soldiers crawl through the mud and wade through mirky waters, they can catch vaginal infections. So, they use tampons for protection.

This was the first time I had heard of the usage of a tampon to prevent things from going in, instead of protecting things from coming out and causing much embarrassing blood stains.

What a great opportunity space to rethink the tampon to not only offer 'leakage protection' but also preventing contamination. Apart from claiming greater comfort and supposedly easier insertion, nothing much has happened in this industry for a while - until I came across these products at my favorite drugstore dm* in Germany in June, 2011.

Extra protection
This kind of tampon is specially designed for women to enable them to go swimming and do exercise in water during their periods.

Health enhancer
This brand pushes the boundaries even further: their tampons not only protect but even promote vaginal health. The brand understands that women who frequently experience vaginal thrush infections are more cautious to use tampons. So they repositioned their brand as vaginal health enhancers. Treated with pro-biotic 'goodness' they claim to add good bacteria to fight off thrush infections caused by bad bacteria. This way, it allows them to tap into the market of non-tampon using women offering them the comfort of using tampons and at the same time fighting off future thrush infections. Does it really work, though?

Bonus: they are made of fibers that have not been bleached and are all natural - reassuring every worry of their customers.

*dm is a drugstore chain in Germany and Austria, currently expanding into Eastern Europe. Beyond great products, dm is known for their employee-friendly management and their sustainability programs. Their founder Goetz Werner bases his approaches on Rudolph Steiner's Anthroposophy. More on his business approaches and focus on the human being here.

This story is about Carol*, a grad student in California.

When I first met her, she told me she had a much younger sister, ten years younger to be exact. It's not the most usual but also not the most unusual. The story got fascinating, when Carol started telling me about her annual bills for medical freezing services that ran up to USD 2,000. This all might not make much sense right now, but let me start from the beginning.

Carol's father is an orthopedic surgeon, specializing on hip and knee surgeries and in his free time he collaborates with university students from Germany inventing medical devices. Carol's mother is a teacher.

After Carol was born, her parents wanted to have another child – but for some reason it didn't quite work. Years of hormone treatments followed and they finally were successful with in vitro.

In vitro fertilisation is a process where they take eggs and fertilize them in a test tube, hence the name. The scientists then look at how many eggs have been successfully inseminated and plant those back into the uterus.

Now, I'm sure you've heard of the octuplets and sextuplets in this world. Many of these have so many siblings because as Carol explains “No scientific decision is being made, like my dad did, but all eggs are put back into the uterus.”

In Carol's case, her father – the scientist – decided that they'd only put two out of the four successfully inseminated and healthily developing eggs into her mom's uterus. The remaining ones, they stuck into the freezer – a professional, medical freezer of course. At this point, Carol explains that “other couples get into ethical and religious arguments where they feel like are they are killing their children or playing God by selecting one egg over the other. My dad was just my dad, the scientist, and there was no issue with freezing the other ones.”

As the pregnancy develops, her mother experiences a miscarriage and only one child is born – exactly as the parents had hoped for.

Carol learns all this as a ten year-old, being the daughter of a scientist it doesn't strike her as very unusual.

The years go by, and as Carol and her sister grow up there is mentioning of the fertilized eggs that are still in the freezer. Her mother starts wondering what to do with them and being her philanthropic self, she entertains thoughts of giving them to couples who can't have children. The moment she voices her plans to her husband - Carol's father – he objects. He doesn't want his genetic material to end up with a family he doesn't know and have no connections with. He'd rather donate them to science. To this proposal, Carol's mom can't agree to. “Why should she let science do cruel experiments with my siblings?” Carol remarks. And so, the eggs stay in the freezer and Carol's parents keep paying the freezer bills.

So, how does Carol end up with the freezer bills?

Carol goes off to college and on one of her trips home, finds her parents putting together their will. Sitting down with to finalize the process, their lawyer asks them the following question: “Besides real estate, bank accounts, life insurance and other assets, are there any unusual assets?”

Her parents and Carol look at each other: “Uhm, the eggs in the freezer!”

Her parents can't agree on what to do, so a spontaneous decision is made: they sign them over to their daughter.

Here is Carol, 22 years old, a grad school student, having inherited her siblings-to-be who sit in a medical freezer because her parents can't agree what to do with them.

Maybe realizing the awkwardness, Carol's dad adds a new spin to this. In case his daughter doesn't meet Mr. Right in her fertile years, or in case she might have troubles getting pregnant, she could always give birth to what genetically are her sibling. Sounds all great to a scientist …

Here is Carol's take on her father's offer: “How am I going to convince my future husband to have children that technically are my siblings, and then give birth to them?”

In the end, her parents continue paying for the freezer bills and not much has changed. But Carol has come to the conclusion that she has helped her parents with the conundrum, and reassures herself that “the eggs are probably freezer burned by now, so that's that.”

Special thanks to Carol for sharing your family story with WellAroundTheWorld!

*as always, names are changed to protect patient privacy. 

Ümran* is in her mid forties and has three daughters and one son. Her husband has a rafting company and moved the family to the riverside for business proximity. They live in a large house by the beautiful Köprülü Canyon. Her husband's business is going extremely well, especially since he started hiring cheap labor from Kyrgyzstan as rafting guides. They have the right cultural background (they are Turks) and language skills (they speak Russian). With the majority of the rafting tourists being from Russia, this makes the perfect combination.

However, his family is very lonely. In a culture where there are no female public spaces (the tea house is a men's place) it's perceived as inappropriate for a woman to go out of the house unless she has a reason. Until recently, Ümran's reason had been her only friend who had lived one mile away from her house. The perfect walking distance to see a friend, she finds. But her friend moved to Antalya and since then Ümran has hardly been leaving the house. “There is nothing for me to do, nobody I can go and see, so I just sit here and watch TV, drinking one sweet tea after the other. Now I am fat and my doctor tells me to lose weight, but how?” She shows me her latest blood works and points to the encircled high cholesterol among other clinical and sub-clinical test results.

For now, her daughters are still in school and free to move around, at least during the day. “The evenings are lonely, too.” says Ümran when her daughter leaves the sitting room. Shortly, she comes back serving us another round of sweet tea.

* Name has been changed for patient's privacy.

Warning: this post contains graphic descriptions of sexual nature.

Over dinner in Phnom Penh, my friend Louise who is a teacher at an international school tells us about the lack of sex education in Cambodia. When she prepared classes for her students, she realized that her Cambodian assistant teacher had many questions herself. In order to avoid embarrassment in front of the students, Louise organized a sex ed Q&A session for the Cambodian assistant teachers. In this session, her coworkers revealed their beliefs with her. She shared with us the following ones:

#1 For beautiful skin, a girl should take her first period blood and rub her face with it.
How does this superstition play out in day-to-day life: Who tells you to do this? Will this come up in people's gossip when a girl develops acne? Or, is it just another way of telling a girl that she's now a young woman and allowed to care about her beauty?

#2 A girls breasts grow in size the more they are touched by a man.
This would ruin the plastic surgery industry if it was only true. But what does this belief mean in a Cambodian context where many children are caught in the child sex trade?

The most fascinating belief we thought was this one:

#3 To give birth to a healthy child, the couple needs to have intercourse many times.
Each time a part of the baby's body gets made, such as a hand, an arm, the head, a leg, etc. I'm sure this myth comes very handy for the horny husband during his wife's pregnancy. On the other hand, what are people's thoughts when a child is born disabled? Does the husband blame his wife? Do family members give the fault to the couple? Who perpetuates this belief?