Once bitten, twice as determined

The terror of being attacked by a shark didn’t hit me right away. Disbelief struck first as the jaws clenched on my right foot. Instinct took over as I kicked wildly to break free. Then alarm grew as I realized I’d failed to escape; the shark sank its jagged teeth into my foot a second time.

A slimy body slithered between my legs, but I couldn’t see it through the breaking waves and dark water. Terror surfaced the moment I realized I was tangling with a shark in waist-deep water just 50 feet from land at Canaveral National Seashore.

I remember the images: falling into the waves as my leg bent forward in a way it never had before, my arms outstretched in a panicked plea for help, screaming as my husband carried me ashore. I remember collapsing onto the wet beach, my blood pouring onto the sand and washing out with the next wave, and then staring at my foot – mangled and shredded from my ankle to the bottom of my heel.

In the next moments on that August afternoon, panic washed away. A soothing calm descended. What, by all accounts, should have been agonizing pain was a dull ache – no worse than a stomach cramp. Medical experts say an adrenaline-induced release of endorphins can account for such a reaction. It has happened to soldiers who continue fighting without realizing they’ve been shot.

Just as I collapsed on the beach, a nurse returning unusually late from her daily stroll rushed toward my husband Craig Wickham and me on the nearly deserted beach. Tecla Lucignani wrapped my foot tightly in my beach towel, applied pressure and elevated it. She stopped the bleeding until help arrived. Rescue workers cleaned the wounds before carrying me off over their shoulders.

Nearly an hour passed between the shark attack and when I reached the emergency room, yet the pain never grew worse.

“Your Achilles tendon is completely ruptured,” a Bert Fish Medical Center doctor said.

My heart sank. Ballroom dancing is my passion. “What does this mean?” I asked.

I cannot recall the doctor’s exact words, but that moment was the greatest relief I’ve ever known. This could be fixed, he said. Many people – from well-known athletes such as Miami Dolphins legend Dan Marino to weekend tennis players – have snapped their Achilles tendons.

“Don’t worry,” the doctor reassured me, “you’ll be back to dancing next year.”

Orthopedic surgeon Dr. Charles Kollmer took about an hour to sew my tendon, its sheath, my heel pad and my skin back together.

Freedom dance

Dance has been a part of my life since I was 5 years old, starting with tap, ballet and jazz lessons. In recent years, I took up ballroom dancing, investing more than 100 hours in private lessons and even more in practice. My focus had mostly been on improving my skills and social dancing. My dance partners are my friends.

To me, dancing is the purest form of expression – a passionate display of all of life’s emotions. When I dance, I feel free.

I had always taken care to preserve my feet for dancing. I wore sensible shoes and refused to participate in such sports as in-line skating lest I be injured. I’ve done a few shows with my coach and finally planned to do some competitions after years of coaxing by him and my friends.

The shark attack put me out of work for several months as I took paid disability leave from the Orlando Sentinel. I had planned to write a series about the coasts and ocean for the paper, where I worked on the special investigative projects team. It seemed a natural pairing of my interests and career.

I’d always loved the beach. I had just completed an ocean-science fellowship at the University of Rhode Island’s graduate School of Oceanography. I was also due to attend another fellowship at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. But that would have to wait.

Closer to the floor

Last year, sharks attacked 61 people on a planet of more than 6 billion. At the national park where I swam, they had bitten only two other people in the past decade. The probability of a shark attack in Florida is one in 11.5 million, according to UF’s International Shark Attack File. I was more likely to get struck by lightning.

Beach patrol workers call these bites “nips.” Typically, sharks that attack swimmers and surfers off the east coast of Central Florida, such as spinner or blacktip sharks, have mistaken hands or feet for food.

But “nip” is a deceptive term. I was unable to do the simplest things. As everyone with an injury eventually realizes, little things become the biggest obstacles – getting food, taking a shower, washing clothes. Craig and my mother were saddled with the full-time job of caring for me and taking me to medical appointments – and caring for my elderly, high-maintenance, 100-pound dog, Frankie.

I kept my foot elevated in a cast for about seven weeks so the tendon could heal and the skin around it could pull back together. For some time, putting my leg down to move around with a walker was too uncomfortable for more than just a few seconds. I ended up scooting around the house on my behind.

At other times, I rolled around in a wheelchair. I felt renewed admiration for people with disabilities that would never heal. I couldn’t reach inside the refrigerator, I couldn’t fit into my closet, I couldn’t even get close enough to the sink to wash my hands or brush my teeth. I discovered it’s nearly impossible to smoothly carry a plate of food or a glass of water in a wheelchair when you need both arms to move the wheels.

The day before my 39th birthday in October, I was fitted with a strap-on walking boot that kept my leg stable. I looked like a Star Wars stormtrooper. My injured leg had shrunken to half its normal size.

Now I had to stand on it. My postoperative doctor instructed me to add weight gradually over two weeks. So I leaned on a walker and a cane. I tried marching in place. But taking a real step was simply too painful. At the end of two weeks, I sat in my wheelchair at my kitchen table and cried. I just couldn’t do it.

Two days later, my breakthrough arrived: I was walking around my house in my boot, unassisted.

After another two weeks, I shed my boot for tennis shoes, started driving and scheduled physical therapy. And I returned to work – slowly at first. At the time, I was a senior reporter on the paper’s special investigative projects team. I combined working from home with office time for a couple of months, which helped fit in my three-day-a-week physical therapy.

My therapy focused on stretching and strengthening the tendon as well as rebuilding my leg and foot muscles. I walked on a treadmill, balanced on a wooden beam on the floor, pushed weights with my foot and walked around the room on my heels and toes. Each time I conquered a task, I translated it in my mind to dance. Balancing and bending on my bad foot meant I could do a key move in bolero; a rise up on my toe meant a return to waltz.

Sometimes, it felt like someone was sticking me with sharp needles. But I didn’t complain. Every exercise, every extra pound of weight, every scar-reduction massage moved me one step closer to the dance floor.

Hearing the music

It was December when I rejoined my friends at the holiday dance for our club, USA Dance. I only danced about 10 times – a slow night for me. Before the shark attack, I rarely sat down at the dances I attended once or twice a week.

I used to waltz across the floor in large, graceful strides. In a swing or hustle, I could snap around in a spin in less than a second. Now I felt too afraid to spin, and I was off balance. I knew I needed more time.

By late January – with more physical therapy – I was in good shape. I could spin, I could balance, I could waltz.

Yet I was afraid to love dancing as much as I had. As the beat of the salsa and cha-cha blared, I feared somehow my foot would betray me. But as the weeks wore on, and the music played, doubt melted away.

I wanted to make the most of this second chance. I let myself love the freedom and energy of being on the dance floor more than ever. I’ve recovered 100 percent, and I plan to compete.

Yet to close this chapter in my life, I knew I had to return to the beach.

On a scorching day, I pulled into the national seashore parking lot. I met Tecla, the nurse who helped save my leg, to thank her once again.

“Are you ready to go back in the water?” she asked. “I’ll go with you.”

We took several steps into the sea. We were almost knee-deep and some of the bigger waves splashed water up to our waists. The images of the previous nine months played in my mind. I knew I wouldn’t go farther. Not that day. Not there.

One day, I may return to the water. But for now, swimming in the ocean is a small thing to give up when I have received so much. That August day on the beach delivered a message: Journalism – particularly environmental journalism – is a passion I should follow.

And dance is my gift, something I should continue to share with others and pursue without reservation.

Although my path is set, I know my route will still be drawn by my choices – to get involved or look away, to take a risk or stay the course, to sit it out or dance. When you’re given a second chance, the decision is clear.

I’ll always choose to dance.

Debbie Salamone is the Orlando Sentinel’s assistant city editor.