A British yoga instructor said she is lucky to be alive after she was sliced open by a ship propeller while snorkeling in Mexico during a dream vacation together with her husband.
Amor Armitage, 37, said it’s a “miracle” she survived the horrific accident on Dec. 17 while swimming within the azure waters off Cozumel, the exotic island renowned for its world-class diving.
Armitage described the nightmarish ordeal on her website, yogabasingstoke.com.
She said it began when she was snorkeling and free diving while her hubby, Chase, a movie stuntman who had been working on a US flick.
The yoga instructor said she decided to return to the boat and was about to climb the ladder when the boat’s engine roared to life.
“Once I hold onto the ladder, I take out one fin, the captain of the boat doesn’t see me, I suddenly realise the boat has began moving and I’m unable to say anything, words just didn’t come out as fear freezed [sic] me,” Armitage wrote.
“Every thing seems to decelerate as I feel the boat’s propeller hitting my abdomen, genitals and legs, my body feels heavy and I see the boat moving away from me, out of my gut comes a visceral scream, asking for help, the captain sees me but I do know I even have to swim towards the boat, so with cuts throughout my body I managed to swim to the ladder once more,” she continued.
Armitage said the captain told her she needed to “go up the ladder,” but she “looked down and see my insides out.”
“God should have been holding me (through the surge of stress hormones) that helped me push myself as much as the boat while my leg feels broken, my body feels mutilated and I feel a pain that’s out of this world,” she described.
Armitage eventually made it back onto the boat, where she said her husband’s words and love kept her alive on the journey to the hospital.
“He did his best to maintain me with him and I actually feel that if it wasn’t for my angel Chase, I’d not be here today,” she added.
Nevertheless it was a blood clot which was the true miracle.
“Evidently in the course of the accident, I got a blood clot in my femoral artery which prevented me from losing an excessive amount of blood each during transport to the hospital, and through surgery,” Armitage revealed.
“Without it, I’d have lost plenty of blood,” Armitage said.
The yoga instructor said she was also lucky that the propeller didn’t reach any of her organs — and that she had an “extra artery.”
The additional blood vessel “allowed blood to flow into to the entire leg and foot,” she said, adding that “not everyone has this artery, so doctors were really glad and so am I.”
Armitage has undergone three surgeries and 10 blood transfusions after the horrifying accident.
She described a part of her inner thigh as “completely scrambled” and her quads, tendons and tibial bone as “sliced.”
On Dec. 29, she gave an update through which she was still on antibiotics, painkillers and “a complete lot of medication.”
She wrote that she has “cried lots and smiled too.”
“I’m at peace, I accept what happened fully and know that the Universe has a divine plan for me through this,” she said.
Armitage said she needs to be able to return to the UK early this month, but that the “road to recovery might be slow” and the “hospital bills are huge.”
She added that the couple didn’t have insurance in the course of the ill-fated trip.
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