Credit: @lilithengler/Instagram
Toothpick Nearly Caused Woman To Get Her Leg Amputated
A woman almost had to have her leg amputated after an unlucky encounter with a loose toothpick.
What started as a classic case of teenage procrastination nearly turned into a medical nightmare for Lilith Engler, who shared her harrowing story in a recent viral video.
“I almost was an amputee,” she says at the start of the clip, recalling a bizarre and painful series of events that began just before her 13th birthday.
“My room was an absolute disaster, and my grandma said I couldn’t have a birthday party until it was clean… so I shoved everything under my bed.”
Among the clutter was a plate left over from a steak dinner and a stray toothpick.
“I ran over the toothpick… right with my knee,” Engler explains. “It hurt, and I looked down, and there was still half a toothpick on the ground. I convinced myself it had always been half.”
The pain subsided, but the damage was far from over.
A full year passed before the real consequences began to surface. While attempting the splits during a dance class, Engler aggravated the injury.
An MRI revealed a cyst in her knee. “They were like, this b***h didn’t strain a nerve – she has a disease.”
Further scans showed the truth: the toothpick had embedded itself in Engler’s knee, and her body had formed a cyst around it.
Still terrified of needles and blood, she delayed removal: “Doctors are like, ‘Do you want to get it removed?’ and I was like, ‘No.’”
That decision nearly cost her a limb.
While on a children’s rollercoaster at the Mall of America, she struck her knee, bursting the cyst.
Engler recalls: “My knee kind of looked like it was bruised but also sunburned… kind of peeling away, which – yuck.”
Things got worse. One day in history class, Engler noticed something dripping down her leg.
“It was a bright orange liquid coming from my knee,” she described.
Engler’s horrified grandmother took her to the doctor, where she was told the infection was so severe she needed emergency surgery.
“The infection was actually a quarter of a centimeter from going into your joint,” doctors told her post-op. “If it had gone any further, we would have had to amputate your leg.”
What started as an effort to avoid cleaning Engler’s room turned into a traumatic lesson she’ll never forget.
As she puts it bluntly: “That’s why you should always clean your room.”
You can watch the video via ARK Media here.
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