Mamamia's "No Filter" podcast dedicated a full 52-minute episode to WanderSafe Co-Founder, CMO, and Global Ambassador Stephenie Rodriguez in March 2022. The episode, titled "The Day Stephenie Rodriguez Lost Her Feet," is one of the most candid and emotionally raw accounts of her survival story ever recorded.
The Day Everything Changed
The episode opens with the events of September 2019. Stephenie was in Lagos, Nigeria, attending the Hive Global Leaders Summit to speak on UN Sustainable Development Goal 17. At the end of the event, while posing for photos with delegates, she was bitten by a mosquito carrying Plasmodium falciparum — cerebral malaria.
Two weeks later, she collapsed at Boston Logan Airport. She fell into a coma in a Boston hospital. Doctors gave her a two percent chance of survival. They administered last rites three times.
The podcast captures the moment her family received the worst possible news: "She has less than five minutes to live. She is not coming back. Say goodbye."
Stephenie came back.
Waking Up
The "No Filter" episode explored what it means to wake up from a coma and discover that your body has fundamentally changed. Stephenie spoke about the trepidation of navigating life with a newly disabled body — the disorientation, the grief, the practical challenges that nobody prepares you for.
The life-saving drugs had redirected blood flow from her extremities to her vital organs. The vasopressors saved her life but destroyed her feet and damaged her hands. What followed was more than 400 days in hospital, 47 surgeries, and the loss of all ten toes and portions of both feet.
For much of this period, Stephenie was a single mother unable to care for her son. The isolation was compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, which restricted hospital visitation just as she needed human connection most.
The Decision to Amputate
After 22 months in a wheelchair with excruciating pain from exposed nerve endings and necrotic heel bones, Stephenie faced the defining choice of her recovery: the wheelchair, permanently, or bilateral amputation.
She chose amputation. On March 31, 2021, she became Australia's first female bilateral above-ankle osseointegrated amputee — titanium rods fused into her shinbones with mechanical robotic feet. Eight weeks of rehabilitation followed as she learned to walk again.
The podcast conveyed the weight of that decision with a honesty that statistics cannot capture. This was not an abstract medical procedure. It was a woman choosing to lose her feet in order to regain her life.
Thank You, Mrs Carter
The Mamamia episode also revealed that Stephenie was working on a book titled Thank You, Mrs Carter, a deeply personal account of her survival and recovery. The title references a figure who played a significant role during her hospitalization — a detail that the podcast left as a thread for readers to follow.
The WanderSafe Connection
The podcast explicitly directed listeners to WanderSafe, describing it as Stephenie's "revolutionary personal safety device for women." The connection between her personal experience and her company's mission was unmistakable: a woman who had survived the most extreme vulnerability imaginable was building technology to ensure that others would never have to face danger without a lifeline.
For Mamamia's audience — predominantly Australian women navigating careers, families, and their own safety concerns — Stephenie's story was not distant or abstract. It was a reminder that vulnerability does not discriminate, and that the tools we build to protect each other matter more than we think.
The original Mamamia No Filter episode is no longer available on the Mamamia platform. This article is reconstructed from verified sources.
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