Lauren Wasser was a 24-year-old model from California when an ordinary day turned into the worst kind of nightmare. She went to the hospital with what felt like the flu—fever, aches, exhaustion. Within hours she was in septic shock. Doctors discovered the cause wasn’t influenza at all, but menstrual toxic shock syndrome (mTSS), a rare, fast-moving infection triggered by bacterial toxins. The likely culprit: a tampon she’d been using exactly as instructed.

Lauren slipped into a coma for more than a week. Her organs began to fail. She suffered two heart attacks. When she finally woke, doctors told her they had to amputate her right leg to save her life. She was 24.

“I’d been using the same brand as always, following the directions like every woman does,” she later told Harper’s Bazaar. “That day the toxins took over my body. I had a 42°C fever, my kidneys and organs started failing, and I had a one-percent chance of survival.”

Lauren’s fight didn’t end there. Years later, lingering damage meant she also lost her left leg. In between, she sued the manufacturer of the tampons she’d used and began speaking out about a risk most people barely think about. “The vagina is the most absorbent part of a woman’s body and a gateway to many vital organs,” she wrote in InStyle. “Consumers deserve to know the reality of what can happen.”