Leah Ramsey never could have predicted that a tiny shard of broken glass she missed while cleaning would trigger a terrifying months-long health spiral.
For the Australian model, what began as a mundane everyday task ended with serious open-heart surgery while she was pregnant.
The 35-year-old, who once appeared on Australia's Next Top Model, had recently relocated to Austin, Texas, with her husband, Strong Pilates CEO Michael Ramsey, and their young son when the incident happened in June 2025.
'I remember the moment I stepped on glass very clearly,' Leah told the Daily Mail.
The family had been moving between Airbnbs, settling into their new life. One afternoon, her curious toddler accidentally knocked over a wine glass.
'I went straight to clean it up... and at some point I must have knelt on a small piece of glass that went into the top of my foot,' Leah recalled.
'I didn't notice it at all. It didn't hurt, it didn't feel dramatic - nothing that would make you think twice.'
What no one realised at the time was that the shard would trigger a serious infection in her foot - one that would enter her bloodstream and eventually reach her heart.
The young family's move was supposed to be a fresh start; instead, it marked the beginning of Leah growing progressively sicker 'out of nowhere'.
Her symptoms ebbed and flowed in confusing ways like swelling, inflammation, fatigue - each one easy enough to explain away on its own.
When she fell pregnant, the exhaustion, dizziness, and persistent sense that something wasn't quite right were brushed off as part of early pregnancy.
Like many women, Leah attributed her symptoms to hormonal shifts, a weakened immune system, or simply the physical toll of growing a baby. Yet beneath those assumptions, a far more worrying process was quietly unfolding.
It wasn't until months later, when her condition had significantly deteriorated, that doctors uncovered the truth: a severe bacterial infection had taken hold, leading to endocarditis, a life-threatening inflammation of the heart.
By then, the situation had escalated beyond anything she could have imagined. Leah was suddenly facing high-risk open-heart surgery while six months pregnant.
Days after her son broke the wine glass, Leah had removed a small shard from her foot herself, but by then the infection had already started to take hold.
Within hours, her condition escalated.
What began as a routine moment picking up after her toddler quickly slipped into something far more insidious when she found herself in the middle of a months-long medical mystery that would end in open-heart surgery while she was pregnant
What no one realised at the time was that the glass had triggered a serious infection in her foot - one that would spread into her bloodstream and, eventually, her heart
'It was around 2am and I was on a telehealth call trying to get antibiotics,' she said, recognising the familiar signs of infection from a previous bout of cellulitis after stepping on a nail 10 years earlier.
'It was that same sense of something not being right under the surface, even if it still looked relatively minor from the outside.'
Leah said the injury escalated really quickly, and what concerned her most was that nothing seemed to be working to fix it.
'The antibiotics didn't help, so I went to urgent care in Austin where they put me on IV antibiotics, and then sent me home with two different oral antibiotics.
'But even after that, there was no improvement. If anything, it was getting worse. The swelling kept increasing,my foot started turning purple,and the pain became intense -to the point where I couldn't put any weight on it at all. It was very clear at that stage that it had gone beyond something minor.'
Days later, doctors identified and drained an abscess, and after IV antibiotics, she was sent home.
At that point, she appeared to be on the mend.
'It felt like a contained issue that had been dealt with properly,' she said.
But in the months that followed, something just didn't feel right.
'Over the next eight months I kept getting these strange, ongoing symptoms -my arms would go numb,I had repeated tonsillitis and laryngitis,random swelling in my limbs,vertigo,fainting,night sweats,and I was constantly exhausted.
'But I also fell pregnant in the middle of all of it,so a lot of those symptoms were explained away as pregnancy-related.It blurred everything,and made it harder to see the bigger picture.'
'In Melbourne I was at the GP constantly,endless blood tests,no real investigating.Christmas was spent in Emergency.Boxing Day in urgent care.I was sleeping nonstop and waking drenched in hot sweats.'
At one point, she was visiting her doctor several times a week for reassurance.
'Looking back,that alone was a red flag.It's not normal to be needing that level of reassurance that often.But when you're in it,and you're being told it's normal,you start to believe it,'she said.
A turning point arrived in January 2026 with a bizarre episode that couldn't possibly be due to pregnancy.
'[When we were back in Texas], my knee suddenly swelled up and didn't improve. It became extremely painful, with red streaking, and it was getting worse quickly,' she said.
The emergency care doctors thought Leah had bursitis - an inflammation or irritation of the small, fluid-filled 'cushions' that protect a tendon where it touches a bone - but that was quickly dismissed.
Leah was then transferred to another hospital in Austin where a vascular team took over and removed the clots in her leg.
'They ran more tests and scans,and that's when they found the arteries in my calf were blocked and strep in my bloodstream.
'That was the first time it really hit that something serious was going on -that this wasn't just random symptoms anymore,it was something systemic.'
In February 2026, Leah underwent open-heart surgery to remove infected tissue and to mend damaged heart valves.
Soon after, a cardiac surgeon found a vegetation (an abnormal lump) growing in Leah's heart valve and she was diagnosed with endocarditis - a rare but potentially fatal infection of the heart's inner lining.
Endocarditis is caused by a bacterial or fungal infection and the germs can reach your heart through your mouth, after surgery or other medical procedures, or through your skin, digestive system, or urinary system.
In February 2026, Leah underwent open-heart surgery to remove infected tissue and to mend her damaged heart valves.
Doctors could not definitively prove that the infection stemmed from the original glass injury, as strep bacteria more commonly enters through the mouth.
But the timing, she said, is difficult to ignore.
'The timing aligned with when all of my symptoms started,' she said.
What made the experience particularly disorienting was how unremarkable it seemed at the beginning.
'There weren't any specific warning signs or red flags. What happened to me is extremely rare.
'There wasn't anything that stood out early on as clearly alarming -it just felt like a minor injury that you'd expect to heal.'
'Looking back,the only thing was that it wasn't improving,but even that didn't feel like a major red flag at the time.'
Leah's experience is a stark reminder that not all serious health conditions begin with obvious symptoms - and that sometimes, the smallest injuries can have the longest shadows
Now recovering,Ramsey is sharing her story with a simple message -particularly for women navigating pregnancy.
'If something doesn't feel right,even slightly,get it checked properly and keep pushing if it's not improving,'she said.
'I think it's very easy,especially during pregnancy,to explain things away or be reassured that it's 'normal'.But you know your body.'
'If something feels off,trust that instinct and advocate for yourself.It's always better to overreact than to miss something that could escalate.'