Leslie Caoili was a competitive strength athlete who once hoisted atlas stones and flipped tires in San Diego strongman meets. Now she is preparing to come home from the hospital without her hands or her legs, after a routine heart checkup uncovered a tear in her aorta that nearly killed her and ultimately cost her all four limbs.
Doctors found the tear during a routine heart checkup, according to 10News, which first reported on Caoili's ordeal and her husband's urgent appeal for help. Leslie underwent an eight-and-a-half-hour emergency surgery to repair the tear in her aorta, the main artery carrying blood from the heart, and that operation saved her life, per the outlet's reporting. Her husband, Lee Caoili, said the surgery was necessary to save her life.
A GoFundMe fundraiser set up in May by Amery Caoili filled in more of the medical picture, describing the diagnosis as a Stanford Type A aortic dissection that required emergency open-heart surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass and aortic reconstruction. That type of tear is notoriously lethal — untreated, it carries a mortality rate of up to 50% within the first 24 hours, and even emergency surgical repair still carries a perioperative death rate between 13% and 25%, according to research published in PMC. Surviving the operation, in other words, was only the first crisis Leslie had to clear.
Blood Flow Cut Off in the Weeks That Followed
The second crisis came after surgery, when Leslie lost blood flow to her hands and feet. Lee told 10News that her hands and feet became blackened and shriveled by the end of the first month. Doctors ultimately amputated her hands at the mid-forearm, and she lost her legs as well, leaving her a quadruple amputee after what had been a healthy, athletic life.
Limb-threatening complications like these are a recognized, though relatively uncommon, consequence of aortic dissection. Clinical data from the International Registry of Acute Aortic Dissection, published in Circulation, shows that acute limb ischemia — the loss of blood supply that can lead to tissue death — occurs in roughly 9.7% of acute aortic dissection cases, driven by lumen collapse or blocked branch arteries. It is a mechanism that can turn a successful heart repair into a second, entirely separate emergency.
From Strongman Competitions to a Hospital Bed
Before her collapse, Leslie competed throughout San Diego's strongman scene. She placed first in the Novice Women Heavyweight division at the Wrath of the Warrior meet in January 2025 and took second in the Masters Women Heavyweight category at San Diego's Strongest Man & Woman competition that July, according to results posted by Grinder Gym. Lee remained by his wife's side throughout her months-long hospital stay, and the couple, parents of two daughters, are now leaning on family and community support as Leslie approaches discharge.
A Race to Rebuild the Family Home
Lee wants Leslie to have a safe, accessible home waiting for her when she is discharged, and she wants nothing more than to return to her family, her children, her dog and her husband. To make that possible, the Caoili family is asking for volunteer carpenters, electricians, HVAC technicians, roofers, flooring installers and painters to help retrofit their house before she comes home.
The scale of that undertaking is significant. Residential accessibility work such as building custom exterior wheelchair ramps and widening interior doorways or bathrooms to meet ADA guidelines typically ranges from $1,000 to more than $10,000, depending on structural complexity, according to standards cited by Mr. Handyman. For a quadruple amputee, the needs go well beyond a single ramp — doorways, bathrooms, and daily living spaces throughout the home may all require modification.
Local nonprofits do exist to help families in situations like this. Rebuilding Together San Diego mobilizes volunteer trade workers and corporate sponsors to complete free accessibility modifications and structural repairs for low-income residents and people with severe disabilities. But regional demand for this kind of help is high: San Diego Habitat for Humanity, which also offers home preservation and accessibility programs, temporarily paused new applications to its volunteer repair programs earlier this year because of that demand. That backlog helps explain why the Caoili family is turning directly to the community rather than waiting on a program queue.
A Long Road of Rehabilitation Ahead
Even once the house is ready, Leslie's recovery is far from over. Medical research published in the journal Physical Therapy notes that inpatient rehabilitation for quadruple amputees demands specialized multi-disciplinary care, custom power mobility equipment, and extended fitting periods for functional upper- and lower-limb prostheses. The financial toll can be staggering over a lifetime: analysis by the RAND Corporation of Department of Veterans Affairs healthcare data estimates that lifetime medical, rehabilitation and prosthetic costs for people with multiple limb loss can exceed $2.9 million.
San Diego County is home to advanced vascular care, including specialized aortic disease centers at Scripps Health and UC San Diego Health that manage complex aortic dissections. That regional expertise likely played a role in getting Leslie through her initial emergency surgery. What she and her family need now is a different kind of help entirely — the kind that shows up with tool belts and volunteers to get a house ready before she walks, or wheels, back through her own front door.
