Medical skill saves a life after shark attack
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| Published on Tuesday, April 14, 2009 |
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By Alfredo Arango
MIAMI, USA -- John Emory never imagined that he could be attacked by a shark while standing in only three feet of water in the ocean. The civil contractor, who works for the United States government, was spear fishing together with a friend who is an ex-diver for the Navy. Suddenly, while his friend was diving, Emory, who was close to the shore, felt a great amount of water rush up at him.
“I thought it was simply a sudden surge, when instantly I felt as if I had been hit by a car or struck by a baseball bat on the leg. That’s when I realized that a shark had attacked me and held my left leg between its jaws to devour me. I punched its head with all my might, but it was as if I’d hit concrete covered in sandpaper,” he says.
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| John Emory and Dr Martin Grossman |
Emory was able to get the animal to let go of his leg, which allowed him to reach a near-by rock and climb on top.
According to zoologists, “the only way sharks can explore an object or organism is to bite it. Generally, shark bites are exploratory, and the animal will swim away after one bite… Sharks normally make one swift attack and then retreat to wait for the victim to die or exhaust before returning to feed. This protects the shark from injury from a wounded and aggressive target; however, it also allows humans time to get out of the water and survive.”
Emory goes on to say that in his case, there was a lot of blood in the water, and the shark actually retreated some distance away, lying in wait. His friend came to his aid, passing close to the shark without being attacked by it. Once outside the water he helped Emory apply a tourniquet, using a belt to try to contain the hemorrhaging a bit.
“The wound was very big, I was bleeding, my blood pressure dropped very much, and I thought I was going to die. I felt as if I were dreaming, as if all that was a nightmare”, says Emory.
With the help of his friend and others, the injured man was retrieved from the water and transported by speedboat to the local military hospital.
“I was stabilized at the hospital, but I thought I would lose my leg. The wound was very deep. They told me later that you could see my bone”, Emory remembers. “Luckily, I was transferred by jet to Fort Lauderdale, Florida where an ambulance drove me to the Aventura Hospital. There, they miraculously saved me”, the patient assures.
Dr Martin Grossman, the surgeon who operated on Emory on an emergency basis, agrees with him when he says: “Number one, it is a miracle that he has his leg; number two, it is a miracle that he healed without infection; number three, it is a miracle that he has movement and he can use his leg without any difficulty or range of motion or anything else”.
The specialist explains that the patient lost one artery, but he was able to preserve the muscles and tendons. “We fixed his muscles underneath his leg, we reattached them to the bone, we fixed a couple of tendons, and we also sewed up his skin. It was like a jigsaw puzzle.
The patient is recovering well. “Everything is healing, the skin is healing and I am getting back movement. It still hurts when I lean on the leg, but I am told that with a little more rehabilitation, I’ll be able to walk normally again”, he says.
As far as what he recommends to others so that they may avoid his tragic experience with the shark attack, Emory assures that his mistake was in not familiarizing himself with the area. “A river flows out close to the place where I was attacked, and sharks go there to seek food. Had I known that, I would never have gone into those waters. Before going into the ocean, people need to know the area very well”.
According to the International Shark Attack File, “the number of shark-human interactions occurring in a given year is directly correlated to the amount of time humans spent in the sea. As the world population continues its upsurge and interest in aquatic recreation concurrently rises, we realistically should expect increases in the number of shark attacks and other aquatic recreation-related injuries. If shark populations remain the same or increase in size, one might predict that there should be more attacks each year than in the previous year because more people are in the water.”
According to the statistical data provided by this organization and available at the Florida Museum of Natural History “surfers/windsurfers (56.6% of cases with victim activity information) and swimmers/waders (35.8%) and were the recreational user groups most often involved in shark attacks in 2008. Less affected were snorkelers (7.6%).” | | | | Reads : 2934 | | | |
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