A TEENAGER has told how she terrifyingly wrestled with a 10ft shark after it sank its jaws into her leg and dragged her underwater.
Brave Addison Bethea fought back as the underwater beast chomped on her right limb, leaving her swimming in a pool of her own blood.
The 18-year-old had been diving for scallops off the coast of Keaton Beach in Florida with her half-brother Rhett Willingham and pals.
She had only been in the water – that was just 5ft deep – for 20 minutes when she felt something tugging at her leg in June last year.
Addison said she initially thought it was her brother playing a prank, before she realised something much more sinister was unfolding.
The cheerleader explained a bull shark had appeared "out of nowhere" and horrifically began pulling her below the surface.
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It locked its fearsome jaws around her right leg, biting her calf before latching onto her thigh, while trying to tug her to the depths.
The cheerleader frantically screamed for Rhett as the shark began to throw her around, before she slipped underwater.
Addison told The Guardian: "And then I came back up, and that’s when I saw everything happening all at once: the shark’s tail thrashing, the blood. It was a lot."
She described that although she registered the powerful predator's "razor-sharp teeth" were gnawing at her thigh, she felt no pain.
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Despite the horror realisation, the teen's survival instincts then kicked in – seeing her take on the huge shark in a movie-like fight for her life.
"I remember feeling everything," Addison explained, describing how she pounded against the sea creature's sandpaper-like skin.
"My whole arm couldn’t even wrap around its body."
Her brother Rhett, 24, hastily swam to her rescue, clutching her in his arms while the shark continued to clench onto the teen's leg.
"That’s when I started hitting the shark," Addison said, explaining that she thumped the beast on the nose to try and scare it away.
She reached inside the shark's gills before gouging its "baseball-sized" eyes in an attempt to free herself from its strong grip.
"Very big, very gooey – very gross," the Florida native said. "I remember even in the moment being, like, eww."
But her counter-attack did little to deter the shark – as it continued to come straight back as soon as she wrestled free from its grip.
Beachgoers heard her desperate cries for help, seeing one local skipper dive onto his boat to save her from the attack.
Rhett, a firefighter and EMT, managed to haul her onboard and began fashioning a makeshift tourniquet to stem the bleeding.
But Addison said she looked down to see her "entire thigh was gone" as she drifted in and out of consciousness as they rushed to shore.
She was then airlifted to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital, where she underwent emergency surgery to save her life.
You don’t take anything for granted once you’ve been through something like that.
An expert surgeon managed to salvage enough of her leg to establish blood flow and stabilise her kneecap, saving her from undergoing an immediate amputation from the hip.
"I didn’t know how severe everything was for me: I could have died," Addison said. "I don’t even remember all my surgeries."
Six days after her first surgery, she had an operation to amputate her leg above the knee – and took her first steps using a walker the next day.
"I don’t really understand how I did it," the courageous teen said.
She spent over half of the summer in hospital recovering from her horror injuries, with her family and boyfriend Ashton at her bedside.
A month after the attack in early August, Addison was fitted with a prosthetic leg and began adjusting to life as an amputee.
She wowed medics and her physical therapists with her determination and managed to leave rehab just weeks later.
After returning to school in September last year, she has continued to work on her recovery and is miraculously back at the gym doing her usual weightlifting routine.
She has even visited the exact spot where she was attacked with her hero brother and her partner.
Addison said of her ordeal: "I’m not going to avoid that when it’s something I like to do.
"It shows you how to be appreciative of what you’ve got.
"You don’t take anything for granted once you’ve been through something like that.
"What you have to realise is that once you get into the ocean, that is not your territory … The shark was following its instincts. Yeah, it sucks that it picked me to bite – but it happens."
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A year on from the attack, she is now expecting a child with Ashton – and they even incorporated her experience into the gender reveal.
The couple served a watermelon carved into the shape of a toothy shark – as she says her "dark humour" helps her cope with the trauma of her brush with death.
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