28-year-old model is making waves after her New York Fashion Week debut. Lauren Wasser — who spent four years recuperating from toxic shock syndrome — stormed the ramp in a glow-in-the-dark structured dress, and a prosthetic leg.
Just when her career was looking up, Lauren came down with flu-like symptoms during a party at the age of 24. She retreated home and decided to sleep off the fever.
Her fever peaked 107° and she didn’t wake up for days, until the police came knocking for a welfare check.
An infection specialist diagnosed her with toxic shock syndrome upon enquiring if she was wearing a tampon. But, the complications that had arisen by then made it necessary to have her right leg amputated below the knee.
“It’s the most excruciating pain I’ve ever…I don’t know how to describe it to you. I was this girl—and then all of a sudden I don’t have a leg, I’m in a wheelchair, I have half a foot, I can’t even walk to the bathroom. I’m in a bed, I can’t move, and I felt like those four walls were my prison,” she says.
Before long, offers started pouring in again for Wasser — whose Instagram account goes by the name of The Impossible Muse — after the photographs surfaced online.
Wasser’s family is involved in a lawsuit against Kotex — the tampon brand Wasser was found wearing during her diagnosis.
