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A woman from Texas is on the path to recovery after being bitten by a shark on a Gulf Coast beach.
Knewz.com has learned that the woman, Tabatha Sullivent, lost a large piece of her calf in the incident.
Speaking to the press in a video call from her hospital bed, she noted that she was doing well considering the circumstances.
“I had a skin graft done on my leg on Friday [July 19],” Sullivent told her interviewer. “I just had a dressing change like, five minutes before this.”
She explained she would have to live without her calf as it was incapable of growing back and that the ensuing graft, in her case, entailed placing skin back onto the bone.
Sullivent noted that she lost some of the feeling in the bottom of her foot and by extension some mobility.
“I’ll probably have to use some sort of walker or brace,” she told her interviewer on live television.
She recalled the conditions of the sea on the day of the attack, saying: “It was okay if you were in shallow water, but it did get murky as you went further out.”
Sullivent credited the lack of transparency in the water to the hurricanes and storms and then offered a warning:
“I think it’s best for everybody to just keep in mind if you can’t see through the water maybe you shouldn’t be in it.”
Her interviewer went on to ask about the bite to which she said:
“I honestly didn't feel anything. I was out with a couple of teenagers and I saw the look on one of their faces and turned around.”
Sullivent claimed she saw something gray in the water and did not immediately know what it was.
Thinking that “it was a fish or something” she tried to kick it away. It was only when she started to swim that she realized something was wrong.
“I don't know if it grabbed me or… I just kind of started to swim away.”
“At that point, something happened. Honestly, I didn't feel a thing. When I started to kick, I realized I couldn’t kick, I couldn’t use that leg.”
Sullivent said that she did not feel anything even after she was pulled out of the water and that the pain only struck when she reached the hospital, when the doctors tried to remove the wound’s initial dressing.
Her husband, who was in the water with her, was also attacked by the shark but sustained relatively minor injuries.
Sullivent noted that she was in a positive state of mind and that she was eager to start walking again.
Despite her harrowing brush with the deadly predator, she claimed that the attack did not put her off the sea and that she planned on returning to it, per Fox Weather.
Knewz.com reported on the incident when it first occured on the sweltering Fourth of July holiday when Sullivent, her husband, along with one other beachgoer, were all attacked by the same shark.
On the same day, another person was attacked in Florida.