Lauren Wasser woke up in a hospital bed 80 pounds heavier than she was supposed to be — filled with fluids to try to flush the toxins from her body.
She struggled to move, and her feet felt like they were being lit with a lighter again and again. But the model did not know how dire her situation was — until she overheard a nurse discussing the surgery that would upend her life: Wasser, just 24 years old at the time, would need a below-the-knee amputation on her right leg.
"I just lost it," she recalled in a telephone interview with The Washington Post.