A teenaged diver who was attacked by a pair of reef sharks off the coast of Belize is recovering at a hospital in Miami, Florida.
The very rare incident — the odds of which are 1 in 11.5 million — took place recently off the Lighthouse Reef Atoll.
Fifteen-year-old Annabelle Carson was vacationing with her family and had gone back into the water for a swim after a dive when two sharks attacked her.
Carson was able to fight the sharks off, and quick action by the dive boat’s crew got her to shore, where a helicopter medevaced her to a trauma center in Belize City, where she was stabilized and then flown to Miami.
The attack was so severe that doctors had to amputate the leg above the knee.
According to a post on a GoFundMe page set up by a family friend to help pay for medical expenses:
“The doctors will work to revise the amputation to best fit her for a prosethetic. She is also undergoing a procedure called targeted muscle reinnervation in which they bury her leg nerves into the muscle to help with phantom pain. A big source of her pain these days has been the feeling that her leg is still there. Good news is that her hands are healing. We worked with the rehabilitation team yesterday to start moving her fingers and also sit up on the end of her bed. Through all of this Annabelle has been so positive and hard working. She knows how important these little steps are to her recovery.”
