A New York City woman is opening up about the moment she freed herself from the jaws of a shark during a trip to the beach, surviving the attack with minimal injuries.
Lyudmila Emag, from Brooklyn, spoke to PEOPLE about the frightening attack, which occurred during Fourth of July weekend when she was swimming with two friends in the shallow waters of Fire Island, located near the south shore of Long Island.
“We started swimming across the shore, maybe like 30 yards from the shoreline. That’s when I felt like something grabbed me on my thigh,” the 47-year-old tells PEOPLE. “I just screamed to my friends, ‘Something is biting me!’ And I felt like it was holding onto me for some time.”
“I couldn’t touch the ground so I was still swimming with my right arm and I used my left hand to take it off me,” Emag recalls, noting that she struggled to unclench the shark’s jaw. “I’m not sure exactly if I went inside the shark’s mouth or not but I had some small cuts on my hand too. I didn’t even see it coming.”
By the time Emag got back to the shore, she saw tooth marks and blood dripping down her leg. However, she admits she knew she was alright because “I was standing on my own two feet.”
“It’s funny because it was not painful at all. I think it was just pressure. I’m not sure if the adrenaline kicked in or just the way the injuries were, they were not close to the nerves maybe. But I didn’t really feel pain.”
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Lyudmila Emag’s shark bite.
Maxim Tsarenka
One of Emag’s friends immediately flagged down lifeguards, who arrived within five minutes, cleaned her wound and covered it with gauze. The lifeguards called park police and officials escorted her back to the mainland where she was transported to South Shore University Hospital by an ambulance.
Once at South Shore, Emag was treated by Dr. Nadia Baranchuk, an emergency medicine attendant.
“I remember seeing her sitting on a stretcher extremely calm, a little too calm for what had just happened to her. But I think her adrenaline was still running pretty high,” she tells PEOPLE, sharing the extent of Emag’s injuries.
“Luckily, the groin was not infected. Major vasculature wasn’t infected. She was able to move her leg and walk on her own so that was great,” Baranchuk explains. “She did have a bunch of lacerations, abrasions as well as a lot of puncture wounds. Some were more superficial, some were deep and it all kind of spread across her thigh area.”
Baranchuk says that shark bites are treated just as any animal bites: victims receive a tetanus shot, get x-rays to make sure there are no foreign bodies left, undergo copious irrigation to get rid of any bacteria, receive stitches, if necessary, and take antibiotics.
Emag didn’t need stitches and she was ultimately discharged from the hospital the same day, calling herself “lucky” to have had minor injuries.
“It’s been three weeks and I just stopped applying dressing and antibiotic ointments. One area by the groin still bothers me but I started playing tennis again and I’m thinking about going to the gym for the first time since,” Emag says. “I 100% feel lucky because when you think of shark attacks, you think about amputations and huge injuries. So I feel really lucky.”
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Lyudmila Emag with police after being treated for a shark bite.
Maxim Tsarenka
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Emag wasn’t the only lucky patient that day. Just an hour and a half before treating Emag, Baranchuk was treating another shark attack victim who had been bitten in the hand. This patient — although they also only had minor injuries — needed a foreign body removed from the wound, which Baranchuk believes was a shark tooth.
There were reportedly five shark attacks in New York in just two days over Fourth of July weekend. Although shark attacks are still rare, as people continue to visit the beach this summer, Baranchuk is offering advice to anyone who finds themselves with a shark bite.
“If you are not near a hospital, number one is you need to make sure the bleeding is controlled. Once the bleeding is controlled, then you should seek medical attention. But if you don’t have that opportunity, then you have to wash off your wound,” she says.
“You’re still gonna need medical attention because you need antibiotics. Every animal bite needs antibiotics because it does tend to get infected,” Baranchuk continues. “But definitely if an ambulance is a couple of hours away — maybe you’re in a rural environment somewhere or you’re swimming far away — you definitely need to try to wash out the wound area.”
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education