How TMH Helped Addison Bethea Thrive After Shark Attack

With grit and determination, along with the help of a multidisciplinary care team at Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare (TMH), Addison Bethea, 17, is thriving as she continues to recover following a vicious shark attack over the summer.

But as she was rushed to TMH on the last day of June, her parents weren’t sure she would survive.

“You don’t know if your daughter is going to make it or not at that point,” Addison’s mother, Michelle Murphy, says through tears. “And you’re just praying that when you get there, everything’s good.”

Addison and her brother, Rhett Willingham, were scalloping off the Keaton Beach coast when Addison thought she felt Rhett bump into her leg.

“The next thing I know I’m being attacked by a shark,” says Addison, a senior at Taylor County High School in Perry, Florida. “I started grabbing its gills and its eyeballs and tried to pry it off me. I was also screaming for help and getting dragged under the water.”

Rhett came to her aid, and they fought off the 9-foot shark before Rhett swam Addison to safety.

“Then I went into shock, and all I remember was being thrown into a boat,” she says.

Nearby good Samaritans helped them get to shore, and Addison was airlifted to the Tallahassee Memorial Bixler Trauma and Emergency Center, the region’s only Level II Trauma Center. Bixler is a 53-bed emergency center, equipped with four trauma bays. More than 65,000 people are treated each year by a team highly trained in trauma and emergency care.

Addison’s injury to her upper right leg was devastating. She lost her quadriceps, the four muscles in the front of the thigh that work together to keep the kneecap stable and allow for lower leg extension, and suffered massive tissue, vascular and nerve damage. She also suffered wounds to her hands and arms in her struggle to fight off the shark.

While shark attacks are rare, complex trauma surgery at TMH is not. TMH surgeons see traumas routinely and were immediately prepared to provide life-saving treatment to Addison.

TMH’s trauma team quickly worked to stabilize her. Surgeons then began working to save as much of Addison’s leg as possible to optimize her long-term function and mobility. Their initial focus was to re-establish blood flow to her lower right leg, which would make subsequent reconstruction of her upper leg possible.

Using veins from her left leg, surgeons restored blood flow to her lower right leg, which helped them preserve the tissue below her wound. That quick-thinking made it possible to use tissue from the lower leg to wrap around Addison’s femur at the amputation site.

“Many other ERs would have cut Addison’s leg off at the hip, and she likely never would have walked again,” says Chris DeRosier, MD, plastic surgeon and a member of TMH’s Trauma Team. “We have one of the most advanced soft tissue management program in the Southeast here at TMH. The commitment we made eight years ago to building this incredible program – including developing extensive processes, systems and physician and nurse training – gave our team the resources, experience and confidence to save her upper leg.”

The quick decisions made by nurses and surgeons her first night in the hospital ensured that Addison would be able to use a prosthesis just below the knee following amputation, rather than losing her entire leg at the hip. Addison’s parents credit her surgeons with creating a better quality of life for their daughter.

“Because of their quick thinking in the OR that night, they provided her with a better life going forward,” Murphy says. “That’s just given her so much more than what could have happened if she was amputated at the hip.”

Robert Brumberg, DO, vascular surgeon; Chris DeRosier, MD, plastic surgeon; John Dortch III, MD, MD, trauma surgeon; Hank Hutchinson, MD, orthopedic surgeon, and Joshua Simmons, MD, emergency medicine physician, worked together to ensure the best possible outcome for Addison and helped guide her parents through possible treatment options.

Something one of the surgeons told Addison’s father helped her parents make the best decision for their daughter.

“He said, ‘We can take muscles from the other leg, the abdomen or the latissimus muscle, but it’s still not going to be a functional leg,’ ” Shane Bethea says. “He told us, ‘I have a 14-year-old and if this was my daughter, there’s no way I would do that to try to keep a leg that’s not going to be functional.’ So we agreed with that, and I was ecstatic that she still could get a prosthesis.”

Addison’s care at TMH didn’t stop with medical and surgical care. Following one of her early surgeries, Addison returned to her room on the pediatric floor to find notes of encouragement from her nurses. TMH’s Animal Therapy and Music Therapy teams also made frequent visits with Addison to help keep her spirits up.

Being in a hospital was a new experience for Addison, but she found her interaction with her care team to be comforting and warm.

“I had never been [a patient] in a hospital before, so when I received all of this attention and everyone asked what I wanted, it was kind of nice,” Addison says with a smile. “It’s a different experience, but everyone was nice and very supportive. Even nurses who weren’t on their shift would just come in and talk to me.”

Support from Addison’s nurses and TMH colleagues made an impact on her parents as well.

“She’s had excellent care here,” Murphy says. “I can’t say enough about everybody at this hospital. The nurses have been so loving with her and with us.”

Following her injury, people from across the world began to rally around Addison. She received social media messages from overseas and gift cards from local businesses. She received enough “Get Well Soon” cards to cover her hospital bed entirely.

Following her surgeries, Addison began inpatient physical therapy in the Main Hospital, and as she made her way around the TMH campus, the support continued.

“The first day she went outside, the first person that passed us said, ‘You’re my hero!’ ” Shane says.

After 20 days, five surgeries and hours of inpatient physical therapy, Addison was discharged from the Main Hospital and admitted to the Tallahassee Memorial Rehabilitation Center (TMRC), where her therapy team expected her to be there for four weeks or longer.

TMRC, a 5-star rated rehabilitation center by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, has 51 patient rooms, three gyms and two occupational therapy suites. There, a team of physicians, nurses, therapists and other healthcare professionals provide a rehabilitation plan designed specifically to meet each patient’s recovery goals.

While TMRC therapists hadn’t worked with a victim of a shark attack before, they had extensive experience with patients who’d received amputations – meaning they were ready to work with Addison.

As Addison began rehabilitation, one of her goals was to walk across the field during her high school’s senior Homecoming celebration – just a little over three months following her amputation.

Addison’s physical and occupational therapists’ focus was on mobility, safety and range of motion to strengthen muscles for future prosthesis use. For more than two weeks, Addison and her team worked on walking on level and unlevel surfaces with crutches, as well as climbing stairs, ramps and curbs.

Her therapists also worked with her on managing routine tasks, such as opening and closing doors while balancing on her crutches and safely picking up items from the floor.

With their help, and Addison’s resilience and perseverance, she was discharged and went home after just 17 days. Following her discharge, Addison completed occupational therapy through Tallahassee Memorial Home Health Care, where she focused on completing daily living activities independently.

Addison received her prosthesis in Orlando in late August. By the end of her first fitting and a rehabilitation session with her new prosthesis, she walked out of her session on her own.

In early October, just 99 days after the shark attack that ultimately cost Addison her leg, she walked across the field to cheers from the crowd at Dorsett Stadium as part of Taylor County High School’s Homecoming Court.

Addison’s continuing recovery isn’t attributed to one department or one surgeon. It's thanks to her determination and dozens of healthcare specialists all working together to heal a child and help guide a family going through something they never expected.

TMH stands ready to respond to trauma and emergencies in the region 24/7. To learn more, visit TMH.ORG/Emergency.