Californian model Lauren Wasser shared her story after she lost her leg and nearly died from bacterial infections allegedly caused by a tampon. In October 2012, Lauren Wasser, now 27, went from going to sleep feeling slightly unwell to being rushed to the hospital “ten minutes from death” with a 107-degree (41,6 Celsius) fever, Vice reports.
Lauren Wasser had it all, being only two years old she already appeared in the Italian Vogue alongside her gorgeous modeling mother. At 24, she had the life most twenty-somethings dream off: she was tall, blond and beautiful and got a lot of attention. Lauren lived in a beautiful apartment in Santa Monica and belonged to the Los Angeles social scene, in order to pursue her modeling career she had given up a full-ride basketball scholarship and lived a very active lifestyle including 30 mile daily biking sessions.
Photo: Jennifer Rovero/ Camraface
On October 3, 2012 Lauren wasn’t feeling that great, almost like she was coming down with the flu. Because she was also on her period, she ran dow to the local drugstore and bought her go-to brand of tampons, Kotex Natural Balance. After 11 years of periods using tampons wasn’t new to Lauren, she knew you had to refresh them in order to keep things healthy and says she replaced her tampon in the morning, afternoon and again in the evening. When she attended a friend’s party later that night she had a hard time standing on her feet: “I tried to act normal,” she tells Vice, though by that point she was struggling to stay upright. “Everyone was like, ‘Dude, you look horrible.'” She drove herself back to Santa Monica, took off all her clothes, and fell into bed. All she wanted to do was sleep.
Eventually her dog barking woke her up, someone was pounding on the door yelling, “Police, police!” Lauren dragged herself to the door, and a cop came in to inspect the apartment. Lauren’s mother, had been worried at Lauren’s lack of communication and called the Police to check on her.
“I hadn’t been able to take my dog out, so there was piss and shit everywhere,” she says. She has no idea how long she was in bed, and can’t remember if it was day or night. The cop eyed the situation, told her to call her mom, and left.
Lauren managed to feed her dog a few carrots from her empty refrigerator and then contacted her mom, who asked if she needed an ambulance. “But I was so sick that I couldn’t make that decision for myself,” Lauren says. “I told her that I wanted to go to bed, and that I’d call her in the morning. And that was the last thing I remember happening.” The next day, her mother sent a friend over along with the police. They found Lauren facedown on her bedroom floor.
She was rushed to a Hospital with a fever of 107 degrees (41,6 Celsius)—ten minutes from death, they said. Her internal organs were shutting down and she’d suffered a massive heart attack. The doctors couldn’t stabilize her, and nobody had any idea what was going on until they called an infectious disease specialist, who immediately asked, “Does she have a tampon in?” She did, and they sent it to the lab. It came back positive for toxic shock syndrome* (read more about it down below).
Photo: Jennifer Rovero/ Camraface
At the hospital, doctors prepared her mom for the worst; they told her to pray and prepare her casket. Lauren was put into a medically induced coma. At one point after waking up she was all alone in the room of the hospital, what happened than is just horrifying, she heard a women talking on the phone about something urgent: “I have a 24-year-old girl here who’s going to need a right-leg below-the-knee amputation.”
“I thought, Oh my God, she’s talking about me,” says Lauren. “I’m going to lose my leg.”
While Lauren was in the hospital, her mother began a massive lawsuit involving Kimberly-Clark Corporation—the manufacturer and distributor of Kotex Natural Balance tampons—as well as the grocery stores Kroger and Ralph’s, both of which sell Kotex Natural Balance. By filing suit, the family’s legal team also wants to create awareness about the use of synthetic materials throughout the tampon industry, and to make women aware of the dangers of TSS.
Lauren said that for a long time, she felt like the four walls were prison, and it took her a long time to come to grips with her new identity. ‘You live your whole life and think, “I’m an athlete” or “I’m a pretty girl” but this was something physical that I had no control over,’ she said.
‘It took me a while to figure out if I was still worthy, if I was still pretty.’
Today Lauren has come a long way and can even crack jokes about the situation. She was helped by photographer girlfriend Jennifer Rovero, who took hundreds of pictures of Lauren as she recovered, treating the process as a sort of therapy.
However, Lauren still can’t stand watching the carefree girls portrayed in the tampon commercials.
‘You know cigarettes can kill you, so when you use them, it’s your choice,’ she said.
‘Had I known all the info about TSS, I would never have used tampons.’
*Toxic Shock Syndrome is a complication caused by bacterial infections (staph bacteria). There’s been a link between tampons usage and bacterial infections for decades. Especially in the 1980’s a lot of women died from the TSS.
Even though tampons have been used for centuries, the last 50 years their composition has changed from natural ingredients like cotton to synthetic ingredients like plastic. Synthetic materials can form an ideal environment for staph bacteria to live in. When manufacturer Proctor & Gamble brought an extra-absorbent tampon to the market called Rely in the 80’s it resulted in a large number of deaths. The tampons acted like agar in a petri dish (the round glass pots they use in labs) on which the bacteria could grow.
