Sydney shark attack survivor Leah Stewart has revealed her leg has finally healed.
The 34-year-old mother suffered critical injuries when a great white shark attacked her at Coogee Beach in June.
Stewart lost her arm in the attack and spent months receiving treatment at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney to close a massive open wound on her leg. After revealing her skin grafts had failed in September, she hailed the major recovery milestone as “the best update” in an Instagram post on Sunday.
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She held up a large piece of card to her leg to illustrate the size of the original bite the shark took from her leg, and played a clip of her rescue to further demonstrate the severity of the wound.
“You can see something is dangling from my leg, that’s the chunk it took.”
“It covered almost my entire thigh.
“When I got to the hospital, part of my quad muscle and my outer hamstring couldn’t be saved. I was left with a huge divot.”
When Stewart lifted up the bottom of her dress to reveal her scar on Sunday, she noted how it is now much smaller than the initial wound due to the method used to close it.
“St Vincent’s are absolute miracle workers, and they managed to close the wound … they used this device called the DermaClose, and what it does is it hooks onto your skin, the outer parts, and it self-winds and pulls your own skin in together,“ she said.
“Because of this, the wound was closed 70 per cent. Absolutely incredible. The last 30 per cent took quite a while to heal.”
Stewart was ecstatic about the results four-and-a-half months after the attack.
“Finally, my own skin said, ‘Hey, let’s fix this’, and my own skin grew over, and now my leg is covered in skin,” Stewart said.
“I can use my leg, and I don’t have to wrap it every time I have a shower, or be worried about infection, because now it is closed.”
“Even though my leg will never have perfect function and I’ll need years of physiotherapy, I’m just so grateful to have a leg and still be walking,” Stewart said.
“Not many people can say they took on a great white, so I’ve decided to wear my scars with pride.”
Previous setbacks had been devastating for the mum-of-one, who was required for months to wear a portable negative pressure wound therapy device, known as a VAC machine.
She cited pride in her medical team and in the healing ability of her own body, as her reasons for showing the scar to her followers, which she said she had thought about keeping private.
“It has been a journey,” Stewart told her followers.
“I survived a great white and I have a cool scar to show for it.”
Physical healing has been just one part of Stewart’s huge recovery journey.
The school teacher last week shared profound progress made in therapy to overcome the mental health impacts of the attack.
She revealed how she has been processing traumatic memories with Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy, which has allowed her to get her “life back”.
“I can recall it but my body doesn’t feel it, like I felt when I was in the water,” she said.
“I don’t always have the image of a shark approaching me with its mouth open.”
