Teen woke up from coma to learn she would soon become a quadruple amputee

A Canadian teen is bravely navigating her new life after she woke up in the ICU and learned she would soon become a quadruple amputee.

Amalie Henze, now 19, woke up on Nov. 4, 2023 after what she described as a series of “weird dreams” – only to learn that she had been in a medically induced coma for three weeks fighting septic shock.

Almost immediately, she told People magazine , she knew something was wrong with her arms and legs.

“I knew something was going on with my limbs because the doctors and nurses and my family were very conscious about not letting me see what my hands and feet looked like at that point,” she recalled of her surreal first moments of consciousness.

On Nov. 5, the doctors told her they were going to have to amputate both her hands and feet.

“It was definitely overwhelming to learn that I had to get my hands and feet amputated. I remember when the doctors first told me. It was definitely a shock,” Henze said.

“I think the scariest part, though, was probably when I did see what one of my feet looked like at the time because I just remember looking down and saw dark black,” she added.

“It didn’t really make sense at the time, so it was definitely very frightening. But I found reassurance through my family and through the nurses and doctors telling me about prosthetics and how so many people are able to live their lives normally with their prosthesis.”

The shocking prognosis came after Henze was admitted to the emergency room one month earlier for what she thought was a bowel obstruction – a common complication due to her Crohn’s disease, she told the magazine.

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“I’d been in and out of the hospital at that point, pretty frequently, for constant obstructions in my small bowel. I was trying to manage that and figure out a plan to finish high school and just continue my life,” she said of her life in the lead-up to the amputations.

When she went to the hospital on Oct. 8, however, she started experiencing weird bladder cramps and sensed that something else was going on.

“I knew something wasn’t right, so I looked at my mom and told her that I loved her. Moments later, when the nurse went to go take my blood pressure, they couldn’t get a read on me. That’s when they noticed my hand starting to turn purple and they both realized that I was going into septic shock,” she said.

The doctors put Henze in a medically induced coma to give her the best chance to fight the massive infection.

“I didn’t know about the sepsis or the septic shock until after I finally came out of the coma, which was when doctors gave me the rundown of what had happened,” she told People.

Photos Henze shared on her TikTok account showed her in the early days of her recovery, with a tracheotomy in place and several tubes running across her bed.

The healing process, she admitted, was long and exhausting, and involved transfers for three different facilities to accommodate her evolving needs.

“I was on TPN, which is nutrition you get through your veins, for a long time. I was also on a feeding tube. It was a very long process trying to get used to not being able to move around because I was bedridden for a lot of my hospital stay,” she said.

“I had a trach in, so I had to do a lot of respiratory therapy to learn to breathe on my own again. I couldn’t talk while I had the trach in, so once I got it out, I had to manage talking differently because my voice was pretty strained,” she says.

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After working on building back some basic strength, Henze learned to acclimate to her new life without her hands and feet.

“It was definitely really strange. I had to relearn everything because there was so much I couldn’t do independently,” she said of the rehab process.

“I had to learn to rely on my family members a lot more to help me do basic things, like going to the washroom, showering and eating.”

The rehab stay also gave Henze time to share the news of her situation with those outside of her closest family and friends.

Once she opened up, Henze said, her friends were “very supportive.”

“It’s definitely been an adjustment, but I’m glad to have the people I have in my life now,” she added.

Henze has also leaned on her family, and added that she has “a lot of help” when it comes to maintaining her mental health in the wake of her hospitalization.

“Being less independent has been really hard to adapt to because I’ve always been a very independent person. Having to rely on my family for a lot of my basic needs has been super hard,” she admitted.

“I find myself feeling really bad for my family members, because I feel like I’m taking up all their time. They’ve definitely been really good at reassuring me that everything’s okay and they want to help.”

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She is also finding unexpected bright spots in her situation, including having her Crohn’s disease in remission and learning how to walk again using prosthetic legs.

“If I had to say I have one advantage, it would be being a double amputee, with both legs because it’s an easier process of learning how to use both prosthetics than it was for other people in my program who only had to learn to use one,” she explained.

In just a few months, Henze has already figured out some ways to do the things she used to with her new body. On her TikTok, she’s documented herself doing her makeup and painting using attachments on her elbows.

Henze is now hoping to raise enough money to eventually get upper extremity prosthetics that will help her be more independent.

“It’s just a matter of funding at this point because they are very expensive to get,” she said.

Henze noted that she is “feeling a lot better and more confident” lately, and enjoys sharing her positive outlook with her almost 31,000 followers on TikTok.

“When I got my first ever surgery, which was for my ileostomy bags, I definitely found comfort through creators on TikTok who also have ileostomy bags and had very similar stories to myself. They definitely helped me become more confident with my ileostomy bag,” she told People.

“So, I think they were my main inspiration for wanting to share my journey with septic shock and becoming a young amputee. I would love to be that kind of person for other young amputees, as those influencers were for me when I was going through a really hard time.”

Only about 28% of septic shock patients survive, Henze noted. Being one of the few to come out the other side of such a medical emergency has given her a renewed sense of purpose.

“The fact that I was able to survive it definitely means something,” she said.

“I’m not sure what that necessarily is yet, but I hope that in the future, I can keep making my difference in the community of young amputees, or any young person who goes through medical trauma.”

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