Friday, June 7, 2024, started like any other sunny, calm day on one of Florida’s Gulf Coast beaches. Families relaxing. Swimmers frolicking in the clear, warm waters. Then everything changed and two unconnected members of the orthopedic community—a CEO of a start-up orthopedic supplier and an orthopedic surgeon went into ER mode and saved the life of a shark attack victim.
The CEO was Alyssa Huffman, of ALLUMIN8, a young and innovative company bringing to market implants which are more bone and patient friendly for orthopedic and spine surgeries. The orthopedic surgeon was Dr. Patrick Toy, M.D., MBA, whose practice is part of the legendary Campbell Clinic Orthopedics in Tennessee.
Like a Scene Out of JAWS
Elisabeth Foley, a 45-year-old wife and mother from Virginia was swimming in the shallow waters of WaterSound Beach, one of America’s most beautiful white sand beaches, 30 miles south of Destin, Florida. A shark, no one knows what kind, spotted Foley and went on the attack. People on the beach saw what was happening and sprang into action.
The shark clamped its jaws on Foley’s arm, then went for her legs.
Among the people already in the water, who immediately rushed to save Foley was Alyssa Huffman.
Huffman was on her first family vacation in three years. She was with her father, who is battling cancer, and this respite was also time to spend with him. Huffman’s children had gone up to the pool with their grandparents.
“While wading in waist-deep water, I heard my sister shouting that she thought a woman nearby might have just been attacked by a shark and that we needed to get out of the water,” Huffman told OTW.
“Initially, I dismissed it as kids playing loudly. However, the piercing screams of the victim’s children quickly made me realize something was terribly wrong. We rushed over to help pull a woman, whom we later learned was the children’s mother, to shore.”
Best Care Team Possible
As the shark continued to circle near shore in the blood-filled water, a team including Huffman and multiple doctors, Emergency Medical Services personnel, Emergency Department staff and a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist, quickly formed around Foley.
She had lost her left hand in the attack, sustained severe injuries to her pelvic region and was losing blood at an alarming rate.
“As everyone shared their work titles, I recognized the best place for me was at her head to guide her through what was happening while putting pressure on her brachial artery. The shark had amputated her arm below the elbow,” Huffman said.
“We all knew stopping further blood loss would be critical to her survival and it would take time for EMS to arrive.”
Dr. Toy wasn’t on the beach when Foley was initially pulled from the water, but he arrived soon after to help.
He had been at the beach earlier with his family just 150 yards away from where Foley was bitten but had gone back to the house where his family was staying which was not far off the beach.
“My daughter who is 22 called me to let me know a woman had been attacked so I headed right back to the beach,” he explained. When he arrived, he saw that Foley had been carried to the boardwalk and five or six people were trying to stabilize her, using whatever materials they could find create tourniquets.
Dr. Toy immediately went into lifesaving mode, asking what was injured and trying to get an overall feel for the situation. He said it brought him back to his experiences as a second-year resident when he treated a lot of trauma patients. “She had injuries to the left upper extremity and the pelvic region. We were all focused on keeping her from bleeding out and minimizing the risk of infection.”
Huffman added, “We focused on what we could control…showing her children her strength through prayer and breath work while the care team focused on keeping her body functioning. Her husband mentioned she was a marathon runner, so she understood the goal. We practiced breathing slowly—four seconds in, four seconds out—between recitations of the Serenity Prayer.”
Huffman said there was no doubt that Foley was a fighter. It took about 30 to 40 minutes for the EMS to arrive because of various access barriers and it was another 15-minute ride to Life Flight where she was immediately operated on.
Divine Intervention
Both Dr. Toy and Huffman believe that strong forces were at play in ensuring that Foley had the best care team possible ready to assemble at the beach that day.
Dr. Toy said that while he had never treated a shark attack victim before, the possibility of such an attack had been on his mind after learning about a recent attack that had occurred in California.
“Just an hour before the attack, I remember being in the water with my daughters thinking about the need to be on the lookout for any sharks in the water. What were the odds that an attack would actually happen? It is like being struck by lightning.”
Huffman said, “I reassured [Foley] that divine intervention was at play, as we had multiple doctors, Emergency Medical Services personnel, Emergency Department staff, and a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist attending to her. She was in the best possible hands.”
Foley’s own faith and her church community have also played an important role in her continual recovery.
Dr. Toy has kept tabs on her road to recovery through his former assistant who reached out to close family and friends.
“She is making progress and has good support from her church, family and friends,” he said. Huffman has stayed in touch with Foley and her family through group text. “She will require many more surgeries, but her medical team was able to salvage her leg which was a major concern due to being attacked in the pelvic region. The kids and her husband were traumatized from the event, and they are all on the long road of healing mentally and physically.”
The entire community of orthopedic suppliers and surgeons have a long tradition of care giving in every way and location imaginable, at home, as volunteers in remote corners of the globe, serving during wartime, as first responders and, even when they least expect to receive the call, on one of Florida’s pristine gulf coast beaches. Thank you, Alyssa Huffman and Dr. Patrick Toy!
