What started as a bit of harmless procrastination nearly turned into a life-altering disaster for Lilith Engler, who says she came dangerously close to losing her leg over something as small as a toothpick.
In a now-viral video, Engler recalled the bizarre medical saga that began just before her 13th birthday. Her grandmother had told her she couldn’t have a party until her room was clean, so she did what most kids might: shoved everything under the bed. Among the mess? A plate from a steak dinner, and a forgotten toothpick.
“I ran over the toothpick… right with my knee,” Engler explained. “It hurt, and I looked down, and there was still half a toothpick on the ground. I convinced myself it had always been half.”
Thinking the pain would pass, she brushed it off. And for a while, it did.
But a year later, while doing the splits in dance class, her knee started acting up again. What she thought was a strained muscle turned out to be far more serious. An MRI revealed a cyst had formed, and doctors soon realized there was a foreign object lodged in her knee.
“The scans showed the toothpick was still inside my leg,” she said. “My body had literally formed a cyst around it.”
Despite the discovery, Engler, terrified of needles and hospitals, refused to get it removed.
Then, during a trip to the Mall of America, disaster struck. While on a kids’ rollercoaster, she banged her knee and the cyst burst.
“My knee looked bruised, sunburned, and was kind of peeling,” she said. Then, in the middle of history class, she noticed a bright orange liquid dripping from her knee.
Panicked, her grandmother rushed her to the doctor. That’s when Engler learned just how close she had come to losing her leg. The infection had spread dangerously close to her joint. Doctors told her, “If it had gone just a quarter of a centimeter further, we would’ve had to amputate.”
She was rushed into emergency surgery, and fortunately, her leg was saved.
Now fully recovered, Engler is using her painful and surreal experience to share one key life lesson:
“That’s why you should always clean your room.”
