An American tourist’s vacation in the Bahamas turned into a nightmare after a shark attack left her leg.
Heidi Ernst, 73, was at a dive site in the Bahamas known as Shark Junction. She was just boarding a boat when the animal grabbed her leg, The Mirror newspaper reported.
The retired physical therapist from Marshalltown, Iowa, had completed her 500th dive a month earlier.
She said she saw the predator fighting in the water but ran away for some reason.
She knew immediately that her leg could not be spared.
“There was blood everywhere,” she told The Gazette newspaper.
“I was dying. I would bleed to death. I was afraid of dying and in great pain.”
She was then flown to a trauma center in Miami, where the extent of the injury and the high risk of infection forced doctors to amputate her leg.
Despite the incident, she said she doesn’t blame the shark for losing her leg.
The retiree said it was “not normal for a shark to come to the surface but he knew there was food on the boat and he thought my leg was food.”
Heidi said she has no plans to stop diving, which she says is her “greatest passion.”