It's hard to imagine from her smiling face the unimaginable experience 9-year-old Leah Lendel has gone through.
Just over a week ago, she and her family were enjoying a day at the beach in Boca Grande when a shark attacked.
WATCH: 9-year-old girl who survived shark attack recounts terrifying moments and her recovery
“I didn't see anything,” Leah recalled. “I was just snorkeling, then I went up to breathe, and then something hard bit me, and then it tried to take me away, and then I picked up my hand, and it was all in blood, and then I started screaming with my mom.”
Chilling moments captured on body camera video showed the quick response from both Good Samaritans and first responders on the ground.
"I noticed that it was her arm that was almost like falling off, so like instantly, I figured out that it was a shark in the water,” said Jay Lendel, Leah’s dad.
Crews airlifted Leah to Muma Children's Hospital at TGH. Her team of doctors detailed her life-saving care, explaining that time was everything.
“That decision in the field to fly directly here was monumental because if they would’ve flown to another hospital and then had to go through all this and then were flown here, we’d have been well outside of the six hours that we like to revascularize a hand,” said Dr. Alfred Hess, an orthopaedic surgeon at Tampa General Hospital and an upper extremity specialist with Florida Orthopaedic Institute. "By flying directly here and having the great care that they had in the ER here and then getting them immediately to the OR, we were able to revascularize the hand within four and a half hours, so that is so much better for the tissues and the recovery and the future function of this hand."
X-Rays show the extent of the damage with the girl's hand nearly bitten off.
"Children have a much greater chance of gaining sensibility to their hands, so sensation and reinnervating the little muscles, the intrinsic muscles in the hand to get coordinated hand function, so we think that she should get all of that back, we're hoping, and we want to see what her wrist does,” said Dr. Hess.
Her recovery isn't over yet, but her parents praised the team surrounding their daughter with care.
“From what I witnessed, I didn’t think she was going to have a hand,” said Nadia Lendel, Leah’s mom. “It was really, really bad. It’s some sort of miracle that God did in our life that now she has a hand, and when my husband said babe, she can move two fingers, and I was just like praise God.”
As for Leah, she said she doesn't know how she managed to stay so brave, but she does plan to go in the water again.
To the people who helped her along the way, Leah would simply say this: "Thank you!"
