Story highlights Toxic shock syndrome is incredibly rare, affecting less than one in 100,000 people in the USIf you use tampons properly, your risk is no higher than a man who's never had a periodModel Lauren Wasser's story is the worst nightmare of anyone with a vagina -- in 2015, she woke up in a hospital to discover she was scheduled for a leg amputation after her tampon caused toxic shock syndrome. This week, Wasser's experience put her back in the news when the Washington Post reported that she may soon have to undergo an amputation of her other leg, too. It's enough to make you want to swear off tampons forever. Toxic shock syndrome, or TSS, is a severe complication of certain bacterial infections; it's often associated with tampons because the blood that accumulates in a tampon can serve as a culture medium for the bacteria. But anyone who's ever fallen down a WebMD rabbit hole and ended up diagnosing themselves with some rare disease knows that statistics aren't necessarily soothing.

Source: CNN December 22, 2017 09:00 UTC