It's Really Not That Bad
The story of the time I almost lost my leg to an NYC puddle
We all have a story or two that with time, become part of the lore of our extended circles of people. They’re told over and over again until they’re exaggerated to the point of legend. Sometimes, it’s a cautionary tale. Or maybe it’s an important lesson. Mine is a little bit of both and involves what many New Yorkers might qualify as a Worst Nightmare. In commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the incident, I decided to throw myself a party called The Leg Party, but it’s been long enough that when I texted out the invitation, several friends replied to say “Oh my god I’ve told this story so many times” but more replied with intrigue and confusion —they had no idea what I was referring to. So, as the story goes:
On June 2nd, 2015 I was working a normal day in my shop. It was the original location of CW Pencil Enterprise, in a tiiiiiiiny storefront on Forsyth Street on the Lower East Side. We’d only opened in mid-March, and in May we had a big article in the New York Times. Now, two weeks later, I’d hired a little more help and we’d survived the initial onslaught of orders and traffic. It was a brutal month — made more difficult by the fact that four days earlier I’d moved into a new apartment on the 5th floor of an 1850s townhouse.
In an old tenement building like the one where my shop was, the only easy and affordable A/C option is a window unit positioned above the door. On this particular day in June, ours was leaking badly onto the entrance. So, I left Caitlin, who was working with me that day and walked to Don Juan, the bodega on the corner of Broome Street. I bought a roll of paper towels and left the store to find that it’d suddenly started raining. Without thinking about it, I pranced across the jagged crossing. As was the case with most surrounding streets in 2015, this one was in great need of re-pavement and was home to a number of murky puddles. You know the ones. They contain a cloudy, smelly, festering cocktail of all of the things that leak in a city. So, picture me: prancing, not running across the street, only to catch the edge of my sandal on an uneven piece of pavement. I was just trying to get back quickly, without getting wet, but instead I ended up on the ground, my knee bloody and caked with tiny bits of gravel. I stood up, embarrassed, and hobbled across the street with my paper towels in hand. People asked if I was okay and I insisted I was. The only customer present when I got back to the shop happened to be a British EMT who pressured me to immediately go to urgent care, even though I insisted that it wasn’t that bad. When I got the courage to look at my wound I saw, with horror, exposed bone and a mess of torn pink flesh in a straight line underneath my kneecap. I didn’t have more than regular band-aids (note to shop owners: keep a proper first aid kit on hand!) so I taped a newly purchased paper towel around my knee with washi tape.
After an Uber ride and an hour spent at CityMD, my knee was clean and stitched up and I was mobile enough to walk to the pharmacy to fill a prescription for antibiotics. I was fine. Mostly, I was annoyed that I’d need to take a day off of work and cancel a couple of sessions with Mike, the handsome personal trainer I’d been training with for a couple of years. In my half unpacked apartment, I laid restlessly in anticipation of the second morning. I’d clean my wound and make the sensible choice to swap my bike for a taxi to work. Instead, I woke up in so much pain I couldn’t even touch my toe to the floor. In bed, helpless, I called my Fed, my largely unavailable finance boyfriend. He left work to carry me, still in my Sleepy Jones pajamas, down the five flights of stairs and around the corner to the same CityMD. They took one look at my knee and called an ambulance.
Something I didn’t know about ambulances is that they ask you which hospital you want to go to. Which one? How was I to know? I was young enough to still be on my mom’s federal employee health insurance and could go to any of them. “We’ll take you to the nice one”, they said. The “nice one” was an ER that’s now called Northwell Health Greenwich Village Hospital on 7th Ave. I was rapidly admitted and hooked up to an IV for antibiotics and morphine — a drug I only knew from a lyric in a Pink song. The pain was, to this day, the worst I’ve ever felt. At once deep and throbbing, like a broken bone, but also sharp like a million needles. Like many tattoo guns, at the same time. I felt it in my whole body. I was there for a full day but I don’t remember much, except that Fed had to go back to work and that the nursing staff frequently checked on me while on the phone with the infectious disease department — they were waiting to see if it got worse. Through a morphine haze, I ordered dinner from a local restaurant, which I couldn’t believe was even an option in the ER. Salmon with quinoa. Remember when we were all eating lots of quinoa? At some point I crudely posted this photo on Instagram to alert my friends that I was out of commission:
Late that night, I was abruptly taken uptown to the real hospital. At Lenox Hill on the Upper East Side I was deposited in a nice, private corner room (thanks, federal health insurance). So much of what followed is blurry, probably because I was on so many drugs and under such stress but I remember being woken up again in the wee hours of morning by a really mean surgeon and being told that they were going to operate immediately. No one told me what was going on, except that I had an infection in my knee. When I was conscious and back in my room the next morning, I don’t remember if anyone was there, but I do recall my brother Evan arriving later. He was newly out of college and unemployed. I told everyone else not to come. I was angry, and I was sure I couldn’t possibly be there much longer. For a few days, I was frequently checked on by various residents in the infectious disease department and I still had a continuous cocktail of morphine and antibiotics pumping through my veins. Fed came by after work every day, and Evan was tasked with helping out at the shop and dealing with my moving stuff. I just laid there, in the hospital, and answered work emails as much as I could handle, watched cable TV, and shopped online. So. Much. Online. Shopping. More than I’ve ever done in my life. A set of 6 yellow striped Kassatex beach towels, a Tiffany blue Kitchen-Aid mixer and a beautiful Aquazurra sailor top on deep discount were amongst the purchases I still own. I fantasized about my new life in my new apartment, and recklessly paid no mind to the balance I was racking up on my credit card. My hair was greasy, my body ached and I needed something to connect me to the world outside my solitary hospital room.
By day 4, I still had no idea what was happening in my knee. An ambiguous infection, with no end in sight. I continued to insist that no one visit me, and my friends and family respected that wish. The anger I felt about the whole ordeal felt uncharacteristic and poisonous — I couldn’t imagine anyone seeing me in such a state. In hindsight, this was the wrong decision. When the surgeon returned to tell me that they needed to operate again because the first surgery didn’t get rid of the infection, it all suddenly felt more real. Still, I didn’t know what the infection was, or what the potential outcomes might be. I’d stopped replying to emails to reschedule things because at that point I had no idea when I’d be back at work. The days that followed are hard to remember, but I do have a visceral memory of the day they came to take the drain out of my leg — the slithering of the plastic tube under my skin and the vile smell. Shortly after, a nurse came in to tell me that I was being discharged. It happened so quickly, and at no point did a doctor come to brief me. I was given some paper work, a pair of crutches, prescriptions for pain killers and antibiotics, a full leg brace, and an appointment for four weeks later. Within the hour, I was on the curb with my brother waiting for a taxi to take me home. Still, I didn’t know the details of what had happened.
So, I went back to work immediately because I didn’t really have a choice. In the shop, I kept my leg propped on an Ikea step stool on the other side of my desk, and the couple of part-time employees I hired in the NYT aftermath did everything that required standing up. The first week back I had rescheduled photo shoots with both Self magazine and Entrepreneur, which I had to endure carefully propped against a surface so as to not need the crutches. One of the photographers even asked if I could remove the brace for a few minutes to which I replied by sobbing. For that whole six weeks, I had a rule that I’d only leave the house once a day — I couldn’t manage the five flights of stairs more than that. My brother went home and Fed eventually moved in, only because I needed the help. Every day, I told the story to neighbors and customers, all of whom told me to sue the city (I didn’t). While I couldn’t go back to the gym just yet, but Trainer Mike sent me to his friend Dan, who was a very good physical therapist.
When four weeks, rolled around, I taxied back up to Lenox Hill and felt excited to get my normal leg back. I’d been in physical therapy for a couple of weeks already and was able to get around without crutches. I waited in the room and waited for the surgeon, who came in, said hi, made small talk and then paused. He started laughing. I looked at him and said “What’s so funny?” to which he replied: “You don’t know what happened to you, do you?”. Defensively, I said “No, because no one would tell me”. He apologized for not being there when I was discharged and rambled off a list of bacteria found in my knee. It was all of the things you’d fear and expect from a murky NYC puddle (including human feces) but then he went on to tell me that what eventually became apparent after the first surgery was that something on that long list had caused necrotizing fasciitis. As in, flesh-eating bacteria. The stuff that spreads aggressively and kills people (the mortality rate is 25%-35%). If the second surgery didn’t work — and he admitted they didn’t think it would — they’d planned on having the amputation talk with me.
The whole thing was funny to me, even only a month later. Of course I got flesh-eating bacteria from a New York City street. It’s just the kind of thing that would happen to me. While it was entirely negligent that I was never told what was wrong with me, I’d chalked it up as the best case scenario. I was already an angry patient — how would I have been if I was told that I would likely lose my leg? I was stunned, but grateful. Quickly, I resumed working out with Mike and stayed in physical therapy for as long as it took for my leg to feel normal (about 6 months). My recovery was hard-earned and I’m grateful to have had Mike and Dan to whip me into shape because otherwise I’d still have a wonky knee. At the time, I was still drinking and spent a lot of time in bars and boy, was this a good tale to tell to strangers over a few drinks! For a year or two, it seemed everyone who hung around the Lower East Side knew me as the girl who got flesh-eating bacteria from crossing the street, and I relished being part of the local lore.
All of this is to say: those puddles are as gross as you think they are. The biggest lesson I took from this order is that it really pays to take good care of your body. Would I have recovered so well if I didn’t lift weights, eat well, and seek treatment right away? Certainly not. Even after all of this, I still wear sandals almost every day in the summer and prance across the street when I’m in a hurry, because life is too short to be too careful and (hopefully) nec fasc doesn’t strike twice.