Lauren was born into a family of models and started modelling at just 2 months old. She was beginning to make a name for herself in the modelling industry when at 24 years old she contracted Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS) from a tampon. TSS is a life-threatening complication from bacterial infections, and due to infection both of Lauren’s legs were amputated. 3 years after being just 10 minutes from death, Lauren made her return to modelling at 27 years old in her now trademark golden legs. She now works to educate and raise awareness about the impact of TSS.

In this conversation Lauren and Steven discuss topics, such as:

 The day that her life changed forever
 How a tampon nearly killed her
 Losing her leg at 24 years old
 Her struggle with depression and suicidal thoughts
 Finding her confidence again
 Her return to modelling
 How her golden legs became her statement piece
 Finding her purpose in tackling Toxic Shock Syndrome
  The information that everyone should hear


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And it's killed hundreds and thousands of women.

If men's dicks were falling off, there would be a resolution tomorrow.

Model, activist, and survivor of 1 of the deadliest diseases.

Caused by a product millions of women use today, resulting in losing both of her legs.

It was super heavy, and I guess I must have passed out.

They found me face down on my bedroom floor.

So when I finally woke up, they needed to amputate my right leg or I was gonna die.

But they're telling me that we cannot give you any pain medicine.

I have felt every single thing that was done to me.

Every day I was throwing, screaming, crying, wanting to think about ways I could kill myself.

But there was something in my soul, it was like, don't pull the trigger.

This shouldn't have happened, but there's nothing on the market for women that is safe for us.

This conversation is not easy to listen to because it's so deeply moving, but it's important that you do.

It's important that more people know about the risks that they face by the products they use every single day.

And it's important that people hear Lauren Wass' unimaginable story.

A story that will change your mind, break your heart and then put it back together again.

Toxic shock syndrome is probably something you've never heard of before, but it can affect anyone, at any time.

Lauren, what do I need to know about your earliest years to understand how you were shaped molded the perspective that you inherited from that early context and environment?

I think the idea of perfection, the idea that physically looking like that 1% and being, I guess back then too, being a supermodel in the late 80s, 90s, that's kind of like the cool era.

And that's kind of where me being around all of these women that were just flawless and beautiful, kind of set the tone and also saw like, You can get away with anything if you're beautiful as well, which was interesting to me.

Like I am a tomboy, I played basketball as my first love.

That's where I think really molded and shaped who I am as a person and why I honestly think I'm alive.

I think having to have the dedication, have the determination, but also like have to show up every single day and give it your all was something that I didn't really see anywhere else.

My dad, unfortunately he was, he got caught up in the whole drug scene, complete drug addict.

Basically saw him homeless on the side of the street when I was younger, like my mom and I would be driving down Melrose and my dad, I would look out and be like, oh my God, that's my dad.

He was, he was a big model, but You know, Studio 54, that whole era was obviously drugs, mostly drugs, but my mom was like, ahead of her career, 21 years old.

She was with Stephanie Seymour and Cindy Crawford and Naomi, that whole era, you know, kind of growing up around that was just kind of crazy to see, she wouldn't even leave the house without wearing makeup or like looking like top of the line.

Like I'll just roll out of bed and put on some basketball shorts and vintage tee and be like, cool, I'm out.

What if I'd asked you then, say you're 16 years old and I said, what do you want to be when you're older?

Oh, I thought it was going to be like the Maria Sharapova of like the WNBA.

Like I was set in stone wanting to be like endorsements, playing ball 24 7, travel, like that was my dream.

Like That's what I really wanted for myself.

So that's why it's kind of like just the irony of like the fact I don't have legs anymore.

Cause I'm like, I'm an athlete first and foremost.

Like that's what I know best is movement, is going outside and going for a run.

I mean, even just we all take for granted just walking in the shower.

October the 3rd, 2012, you're 24 years old.

Can you take me to that day when you woke up that day?

What was, you know, what was, if you can remember the plans you had for that day and how that day unfolded.

Yeah, I was 24, probably the best shape ever in my life.

So I've always had to use super absorbent tampons.

But, and my mom had told me about toxic shock syndrome.

She had told me obviously how to use them properly, change them every few hours.

But on that specific day, I, like any normal day, it was just on my period.

It was super heavy and I ran out of my tampon.

And I just remember feeling super sick, like almost as if I, like the flu, it was October.

So flu season, All of my friends were getting sick and I had to go to my friend's birthday that night.

And it's just me and my blind Cocker Spaniel at the time living in Santa Monica.

I changed my tampon obviously, And I'm just laying there probably, I don't know, 30, 40 minutes, I start feeling even worse.

And I'm like, wow, I'm really feeling sick.

I'm texting with my friends, you know, couple hours go by, change my tampon again.

So this is the second time I've changed it.

It's about now, like, I don't know, 5, 6 p.m.

And I have to get ready to go to my friend's birthday.

So I get in the shower, get myself together, put another tampon in.

And as soon as I drive and I walk into the venue, all of my friends are in there and they're just like, dude, you look so sick.

And I felt it like, I finally in that moment felt like this like whole wave of like heat and also just something is not right.

And I'm like, yeah, I think I should probably just go home.

And I was like, yeah, I'm just feeling kind of unwell, but I think I'm okay.

And then I get to my apartment and I'm just like really, really hot.

So I just take off all of my clothes and I just like lay on the floor by my bed with my dog.

And my mom sprantically trying to like get in contact with me and she can't get ahold of me, but she knew that I was feeling ill.

So she called the police to come by for a welfare check.

So I'm laying on, I remember this because I was laying on my bedroom floor and I just remember my blind cocker spaniel like literally on my chest.

And you know a cocker spaniel, like they're so sweet and friendly.

And she was like ferociously like barking at me to where like I could feel her like breath and her like spit almost.

And she was just like, so like adamant about like getting me up, like jumping on me and stuff.

And then I hear like the knock at the door and I hear police, police open up.

And I'm like, what, Like what's going on?

But at this time I was already accumulating like 107 fever.

So I was pretty much like, just not in any shape or form, like making any real decisions because I'm just so discombobulated of like even what's going on.

So I like throw on a hoodie and I open the door and the cop comes in and he looks at me and he's like, you're really sick.

And I'm like, no shit, you know, like obviously.

And he looks around my apartment and I think like, I didn't even have a chance to take my dog out.

So I'm sure there was like pee and whatever.

And then he's like, so I plugged in my phone and he just fucking left.

So then I like plug my phone in, I text my mom, like the cop just came.

Obviously I'm really sick, but I think I just have the flu.

So I think if there was any real urgency, he would take me to the emergency room.

And at that point I'm in Santa Monica and I'm living 5 minutes from St.

But she was like, after speaking to her, clearly she has that motherly instinct to be like something doesn't sit well.

I just need to just sleep this off and I'll call you in the morning.

Obviously that doesn't sit well with her.

So she feels the need to get another welfare check.

So she was bedridden and she was living in Riverside at the time, which is like, it could take up to like an hour or 2 to even get to me.

So she called all of her friends, all of my friends called the police again to come to my apartment to like see how I'm doing or get me help or something.

So once she did that, the cops came again and it took them like 30 to 45 minutes to get inside of my apartment.

And they found me face down on my bedroom floor, defecated basically myself and everything around me.

John's and they were like, why is this healthy young 24 year old girl plummeting?

And thank God there was an infectious disease doctor that was on call.

And he said, well, does she have a tampon in?

And once they located the tampon and they sent it to the lab, it came back as TSS1.

And that's when they were able to finally kind of get me stable and give me the things that my body was more susceptible to accepting at that time because it was really grim.

They basically gave me a 1% chance of even surviving.

It's because all of these tampons, feminine hygiene products that are available for women on the market right now, if we were to go look, They have chlorine, bleach, dioxin, all these synthetic fibers that we place inside of us at such a delicate time.

And that just gets in your bloodstream and it slowly kills you.

You know, and then if you're using super absorbent tampons, the absorbency is way more than just a normal 1.

And even if you use a cotton tampon, it's still sprayed with pesticides.

So there's actually nothing on the market for women that is safe for us.

Everything has something, some sort of chemical in it.

So you're in hospital, they've given you a 1% chance of surviving, of living.

And they've told your family presumably that your chance of survival is, you have a 99% chance of not surviving.

Do you know how your family had responded to that?

John's of like everyone that I knew to say goodbye to me.

Of course my family too, but like, I'm from LA.

Like I've been around and know everyone And to see that kind of response, especially during that to where like people are actually coming to say their goodbyes and pay their respects is just insane.

Obviously I don't know any of that, but That's just what I've been told, but it's just pretty crazy.

And I was, you know, on life support, fighting for my life.

Yeah, I was on life support in a coma for like a week and a half.

Have you found out when, Ton, while you were in a coma in terms of the treatments they were giving you to try and keep you alive?

So they gave me, they pumped me my whole body full of fluids because the toxins had taken over.

So they pumped my body full of like a hundred pounds of fluid.

So when I finally woke up from the coma, I was 200 pounds.

So like I'm tiny and I woke up and I was just like, I thought I literally just had 1 of those nights where you just eat a bunch of donuts and candy and ice cream.

And I was just like, is this what, you know, I just had no idea why it was literally and had tubes in my throat and machines everywhere.

And my mom obviously like sitting right beside me and everyone freaking out that like I'm awake.

Like no 1 specifically knew how damaged or what severity it was until I could actually like be awake to tell them or to show them.

The rest of your family, your grandparents, your brother, were they around at that time?

I mean, it was really to that point, I mean, my godfather and my mom got a casket.

Like it was to that point of like, this girl probably will not make it.

Yeah, but it has nothing to do with leaving your tampon in too long.

I was changing my tampon as normal as I've always done, as normal as you should, as normal as directed.

But again, I think it's about how toxic these tampons are and how they sit in our bodies.

And, you know, it just takes 1 of those toxins to get in our bloodstream.

And it starts that kind of flu like symptoms, but that's so vague.

It's so, yeah, I just think that could be in so many things.

And even now I would never be able to differentiate.

But now that I have all the information and obviously knowing that like, I'm just a lucky 1 that got away with my life.

You know, looking back on it, I'm like, wow, like that's, it's crazy that that almost killed me.

And it's killed hundreds and thousands of women since the 80s, the early 80s to now, it's still an epidemic that's never gone away.

Was it by chance that that particular doctor was on call that day that asked about, does she have a tampon in?

Oh, I'm so grateful because that in itself is a miracle that there was someone that knows about toxic shock syndrome and understands the dangers and was there and saw, you know, the symptoms that I was obviously showing and had even the idea to ask or to look or to, you know, say, this could be it.

This could probably be why this girl's literally dying right before us.

But it says a lot that they would ask that question.

It says that there's clearly a long history of that being a causal factor for illness, if a doctor would even ask that question.

But the sad thing is, is a lot of it goes misdiagnosed a lot of the time and a lot of people just think it's doesn't happen or it couldn't happen or, you know, it was kind of swept under the rug by tampon companies because it's a billion dollar industry.

And no 1 ever saw someone like myself survive it.

And then being able to say, hey, like this shouldn't be happening.

And that's why I even shared my story to begin with is because I wanted women and I wanted the world to be aware that this is something that we shouldn't be taking lightly and that we need to demand for safer products and also demand like, why is this still happening?

And, you know, obviously then it was 2012, but here we are at 2023 and young women more than ever are in danger.

I read that the doctors were telling your mother to start praying that you would stay alive.

It was like, I feel so bad for my mom because I can't even imagine to like what degree she, you know, seeing me in that state and then every moment is like, you know, when this machine's going off, you know, she's literally sitting on a cot next to me, just staring and hoping that I'd even come to, you know?

You were her best friend as well at that point.

Yeah, and it, yeah, it just probably was so hard.

me about what happened from that point onwards when you start to regain consciousness?

Again, I think when I first woke up, it was just pure shock.

I didn't know why I had the breathing tubes.

And the crazy thing too is I guess during the whole time when I was in a coma, my feet were turning black slowly because a lot of the damage was done when my body was dying.

So all of the blood went to like my brain, my heart, my organs and my everything.

And so your lower extremities or your extremities, if that don't really get the blood because you're dying.

So they're going to preserve the goods first, if that makes sense.

So a lot of that damage was irreversible because I was, I don't know, on my bedroom floor alone, dying for, I don't know, a couple hours, I guess, you know, and that time a lot of that damage was done to my lower extremities, but also it was happening to my hands too.

And to this day, there's no reason why any medical physician can tell me why my hands came back and I didn't have to amputate.

Like they were thinking about amputating my legs and my hands while I was in the coma because they were discolored and turning kind of purplish pink.

Like if I would have woken up and had no arms and no legs, I definitely don't think I would be here.

But the idea of that is just kind of crazy that, and maybe it's because, you know, my arms are close to my heart and the blood flow came easier that way.

When was the first time you were aware that there was a suggestion of amputating anything?

For the first time I was alone in the ICU at St.

And it was just me sitting there and my feet were just constantly on fire.

Like it literally felt as though someone was sitting there just lighting my foot on fire.

My toes on my left side were turning purplish pink, but my right side, there was a lot more damage, you could tell.

And so then the concern came in of basically they needed to amputate my right leg to save my life or I was gonna die.

So I'm laying there, my room is empty, and there is a nurse that comes in and she's on the other side of me behind a curtain.

And she's saying, I have a young girl here, who's 24 years old, who's going to need a right leg below the knee amputation.

And we need to get her in bed right away and into hyperbaric as soon as possible.

So she's on the phone to UCLA to get me into UCLA because they have the best hyperbaric chambers there that basically it's like 200% oxygen that you go into and it basically just like gets everything moving and the blood flow to everything.

And so they were trying to get me a room and I just remember hearing like, I just remember like looking around and being like, is she, she's talking about me.

Like she's saying that I'm an amputation, like, and I just fucking started screaming.

I was like, Do not let this person, do not let anyone touch me.

Do not let this, like, what is she saying?

Like just completely unaware of like the severity of the situation for myself.

And yeah, it was, that was probably the first time where I like even heard the word amputation.

And then from there, I think I just was like, I'm fucking doomed because like, you know, being able to just walk and move and obviously being an athlete and having your legs, like I couldn't even wrap my head around that.

You overhear that behind a curtain, you start screaming.

I think too, it's like being able or just being a normal human being, you never even think about what that looks like, what that even entails of having to live with or having to even put a leg, like your mind doesn't even go there because why would it?

So for me, just knowing what that did look like and what I knew of people with, you know, prosthetics or whatever.

I just, I was like, this is, this is not going to happen.

This is like a fucking nightmare that I just really hope is going to end soon.

Yeah, she came running in and she was just like trying to calm me.

But obviously it was like, she probably knew too, but it was just a shock.

It was just like how I couldn't even comprehend like what that even meant.

So then they were like, we need to get you to UCLA as soon as possible.

It's like our healthcare system is so backwards too.

Like I can look back and say, I'm grateful A, that I had health insurance, but also that I knew people, that I knew people in substantial places and in places that could help me.

But if I didn't know them, I wouldn't have been given those luxurious opportunities of even getting a bed in UCLA if my mom didn't know so-and-so, or if my godfather didn't make this call, or do you know what I mean?

And it's like, that shouldn't even be a thing.

And that was kind of like really, after all of this, I was like, that's really sad that, I don't know, life is kind of picked apart, like what matters and who matters and when it matters and what you, what cards you can pull together, you know?

So just getting to UCLA and in there and getting a room and being able to like have that specific healthcare and that attention, especially when I needed it, was honestly heaven sent because I wouldn't have gotten what I got had I not been in connections with the people that I knew.

But yeah, just getting to UCLA and immediately getting into hyperbaric and trying to see, you know, the severity of the damage and if it was possible to even get any blood flow.

But, and it would be weird because I'd go into the hyperbaric chamber and it's like this huge, it's probably like the size of this room and you could probably pit like 4 or 5 people in it.

And they would just wheel me in and I'd probably have to take some like crazy anti-anxiety medicine because it's like going to the depths of the ocean.

You know, they have to turn the thing and they can't open it for anything.

Like otherwise your lungs would explode and it's like, it's pretty serious.

And then having to like see your feet slowly just mummify or your toes turn black and, you know, this 1 doctor I remember she said something like, yeah, you can just go home and your toes will just fall off.

This is before I got to the doctors that I needed, but that was like kind of the shit that I was presented with of like people coming in and saying like, oh, well, you know, this is just what's gonna happen.

And after that happens, then we'll figure it out.

And then like making a call and being like, this is absolutely like insane.

You just go home and your toes will fall off.

You come out of the hyperbaric chamber, I guess the hope was after coming out of the hyperbaric chamber that there'd be some kind of movement in your feet or something, right?

to do it like 3 times a day for hours on end.

See all The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett transcripts on Applepodcasts

Shocking TRUE Story: “I Lost Both Of My Legs Because Of A Tampon” (Health Warning) - Lauren Wasser