YOU. WILL. NOT. BELIEVE. THIS.
I never in my life thought that I would be writing this to anyone, ever–
Madi got bitten by a shark!
I am not even kidding.
SHE IS OK, got 16 stitches.
Yesterday was our first day here at Cherry Grove, and in the afternoon Russ had both girls at the beach and I was up in the condo making chicken and dumplings. The girls were body surfing and Madi said she felt something close in and clamp down on her leg and foot. She kicked at it, but didn’t make contact with anything– she thought it was “a giant crab”, and headed out of the water. She yelled out to Charlotte that she had been bitten by a crab and Char joined her. As they exited the water, she saw the wound– about 2 and 1/2 inches long, quite deep and gaping and bleeding profusely. Char took one look and said, “That’s a shark bite” and according to Madi, then lectured her all the way up the beach as to why it couldn’t possible be anything else because a crab wouldn’t leave teeth marks and they would hang on and not let go, etc. Madi said later, “She watches WAY too much Animal Planet!” Russ took one look, applied pressure with a towel, calmly called me and said that I needed to come down to the beach, Madi had apparently gotten bit by a shark and we needed to get her to the emergency room. By the time I RAN down there, the Beach Patrol was on the scene and they confirmed it. Said that in five years it was the first one they had ever seen. They dressed the wound, got us directions to the closest emergency room and carried Madi to the car. (By the way, she had already taken a picture of it with her phone and was text-messaging friends before I even got there! Also asked her dad to get her make-up bag for her… Ah, to be 15 again!)
The Beach Patrol guys were AMAZED at how calm and rational Madi was, said they had never seen anything like it. She was shaking and a little shocky, but dry-eyed and talking– even joking a little. At the emergency room, they took her in immediately and also said it was the first shark bite THEY had ever seen, too! The doctor and I talked about getting a plastic surgery or vascular surgery consult– I knew that any decision I made now could affect the way the scar healed, etc.– but after several phone calls we decided that neither was necessary, and that the most important thing was to thoroughly clean the “contaminated wound” and get it closed up. Which we did, but of course we were there for 5 hours! Madi again, was just unbelievable. The emergency room doctor just kept repeating that she was the bravest 15 year old he’d ever treated. Finally they gave her some Versed, and then had to numb the area for cleaning which consisted of sticking needles directly into the wound, and I almost passed out. The deepest gash apparently had some nerve issues going on, because it really wasn’t causing much pain, though it was the scariest looking. The teeth marks and small gash on her toe hurt worse, and when they had to stick a needle into THAT area, Madi finally cried and bit on the blanket they gave her. By the time they were irrigating and cleaning it out– which honestly, was the absolute WORST to watch– she couldn’t feel anything. They used a stiff brush and literally raked through the open wound again and again– it was nauseating, but necessary. The doctor said that there would not be permanent nerve damage, and that as scary as it was, this could have been so very much worse. He finally stitched her up, dressed it, gave her pain medication and serious antibiotics and sent us home at 11:00 pm.
Madi made it through the night, but threw up her pain medicine this morning and returned to sleep until around noon. She is up now, trying to eat something, hobbling around on crutches and said that the pain is manageable. After she has something in her tummy we’ll try the pain medicine again. They think it may have been a sandbar shark, or possibly a blacktip or bonnethead. Russ went out this morning before she woke up and bought her a sharktooth necklace, giant shark beach towel and a small rubber one– I wrote this message on its stomach: “Dear Madi, I am really sorry. Love, The Shark P.S. Nice legs!” Yes, we are a warped, twisted family.
Madi wants to stay here and not go home– yesterday was the FIRST DAY of our stay here– though I left that up to her. The reality of what happened, and what could have happened is really starting to sink in, so we are all kind of sober and subdued today, but oh-so-very GRATEFUL and THANKFUL to God for protecting her.
I will post some photos later, since she had me photo-document the entire adventure– she kept saying, “This should totally go on your blog!” So, here it is!
Seriously, do you even believe this?????
This is an internet photo of a South Carolina sandbar shark:
