PART 1
Ali Truwit gathers her gear as she stands on the deck of a boat floating off Turks and Caicos in the Atlantic Ocean. It’s a warm and sunny day in May, ideal for snorkeling. Sophie Pilkinton, her former Yale swimming teammate, asks her to pose for a photo. Ali grins.
What a perfect life.
Ali ran a marathon with her mom in Copenhagen 10 days ago. Two days ago, she graduated from Yale. Now, she is celebrating with her best friend, about to dive into the crystal clear, blue tropical water.
As they put on their masks and flippers, Sophie grabs Ali’s hand.
“Ali,” she asks, “are you sure there are no sharks here?”
“Soph,” Ali says. “This is where we come all the time. We never see anything here.”
She peers into her friend’s eyes: “Don’t worry,” Ali says.
Sophie relaxes.
Together, they jump.
ALI AND SOPHIE leisurely swim next to the boat for a few minutes, acclimating themselves to the water and their equipment. Then they venture farther away, looking for fish and the coral reef — 20 yards first, then 50, then 100.
Thirty minutes pass. They spot a few fish.
That’s when Sophie sees it. A massive gray shark. Swimming toward Ali.
“I was looking the shark dead in the eyes,” Sophie says.
Ali, who is facing toward Sophie, doesn’t notice it approaching from her right.
“Ali, Ali, Ali,” Sophie yells into her mask. Her name sounds funny underwater. She pokes Ali’s arm. Ali looks at Sophie, and that’s when she notices a presence next to her.
Oh, that must be a dolphin. She’d seen some during her previous trips.
Sophie whips around toward the boat, and Ali — instinctively — turns with her.
The shark moves underneath Ali. Its back comes up under her belly.
Am I riding a dolphin right now?
Then it rams her.
Ali gasps. Her stomach constricts. She knows.
This is no dolphin. This is a shark.
Ali kicks. She makes fists and punches the shark’s back. The shark moves to Sophie. It bumps her from underneath. Sophie kicks and shoves.
The shark moves to Ali’s left side. It opens its mouth and bites. Ali feels no pain.
My leg is in a shark’s mouth.
Ali cranes her neck to look at her left leg.
She sees a stream of blood amid the beautiful clear blue water.
AM I CRAZY or do I not have a foot right now?
Ali pulls off her snorkeling mask and waves it above the water. Sophie does the same.
“Help!” they scream. “Please help!”
The boat is too far away. Their guide can’t hear them.
Their faces above water, Ali and Sophie look at each other. A knowing glance. They have to swim back to the boat. Side by side, masks in hand, they head back.
The shark follows. This time, it hits Sophie, slowing her down. Ali kicks with her right leg and swims, putting some distance between herself and Sophie and the shark.
Then, the shark swims ahead and bumps Ali — hard — from underneath.
I need to survive.
I need to swim as fast as I can to the boat.
She senses blood gushing from her left leg.
Ali reaches the boat and the guide tells her to climb aboard.
“Sir, I don’t have a foot,” Ali says.
He extends his hand, and Ali clings to it as Sophie pushes her from below. Sophie, a medical student, gets back on the boat, and her mind seems absurdly clear. She grabs a towel from the pile of things they’d left on the deck and wraps it around what’s left of Ali’s left leg. She asks the guide for a tourniquet and ties it tightly on Ali’s upper left thigh. She orders Ali to sit on the deck and elevate her left leg. Sophie holds it in the air as the guide radios to shore to request an ambulance.
“I ran a marathon last week,” Ali mumbles to Sophie. “And now I don’t have a foot?”
Right then, a boat approaches. Matt Bevilacqua, a diving instructor, jumps aboard. He had seen them waving for help and rerouted to them. He sits next to Ali, leans in close and asks her questions.
What is your name? Where are you from? Where did you go to college? What was your thesis on?
His only goal: to keep Ali awake.
Facing the sun and the blue Turks sky, Ali answers.
“My name is Ali Truwit. I am from Darien, Connecticut. I graduated from Yale. My thesis was on emotional intelligence and leadership.”
They arrive at the dock. An ambulance is waiting. Sophie almost single-handedly lifts the stretcher and puts Ali into the ambulance. She finds a bucket inside the vehicle and places it underneath Ali’s leg to keep it lifted. She sits next to her, holding the bucket in place. The paramedic struggles to get the blood pressure cuff onto Ali’s arm. Sophie takes over and wraps it around her best friend’s upper arm.
The adrenaline starts to leave Ali’s body. What takes its place is pain like she’s never experienced before. Excruciating, unending pain. It only gets worse with every pothole the ambulance hits as they weave through one-way roads to the hospital.
AT 3:45 P.M., Ali’s mom, Jody Truwit, is walking up her driveway when she receives a call from an international number.
“My stomach felt sick,” Jody says.
She answers.
“We have your daughter Alexandra,” the voice says. “She’s in very critical condition.”
It is the nurse at the Turks hospital.
Sophie grabs the phone.
“Mrs. Truwit,” Sophie says. “We’ve been in a shark attack.”
“The shark took Ali’s foot and part of her leg. We’re in the hospital, trying to stabilize her.”
Tears stream down Jody’s face. “Are you OK?” she asks Sophie.
“I’m physically OK,” Sophie says. “They’re trying to rush her into surgery.”
Sophie places the phone near Ali’s ear. Jody sobs.
“Mom,” Ali says. “Please don’t cry. Sophie and I are not crying.”
Jody runs into the house. She yells for Ali’s dad, Mitch. She tells him what happened. A guttural scream emanates from her husband’s body. In her 26 years of marriage to him, Jody has never heard him scream like that.
Jody comes up with a plan. She will stay on the phone with Ali for as long as she can. Mitch, who is a CEO of a private equity firm, and their three sons will make calls to their primary care doctor, their surgeon friends and relatives. They need to learn as much as they can about shark attacks. Fast.
“Mom, it hurts so much,” Ali whispers into the phone.
Jody, a therapist, asks Ali to breathe in for a count of five and breathe out for a count of five. Box breathing. She repeats mantras she’d chanted with Ali growing up.
“I can and I will.”
“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
“This too shall pass.”
Ali is wheeled into a room separated by white curtains. She is hooked up to monitors. She is given morphine. A doctor walks in and talks about emergency surgery with a saw he had recently procured but never used.
Is treatment in this hospital the only option I have?
Meanwhile, Jody and Mitch’s medical connections advise them to get Ali medevaced home for surgery. Ryder Trauma Center in Miami is the closest.
Over the phone, Jody informs the nurse of their plan. The doctor objects. Ali’s vitals are not stable enough for her to fly safely, he says.
At around 5 p.m., two hours after the attack, Ali flippantly says to Jody, “The shark probably still has my foot.”
Jody passes that information to Mitch, who calls the boat company that took Ali and Sophie on their snorkeling trip. He asks a crew to look for Ali’s foot in the ocean.
About 45 minutes later, as Ali continues to whisper mantras with her mom and as Sophie braids Ali’s hair, the boat crew arrives at the hospital.
One of them is holding Ali’s left foot, still in the flipper.
The crew found it in the same area where the shark had attacked Ali.
Ali feels nauseous. She averts her gaze from her foot.
“Feet can be reattached,” the doctor says. It needs to happen fast — in four hours — but it can happen, he says.
He has never performed a reattachment surgery, he adds.
Shortly after, he OKs Ali’s medevac to Miami.
His proclamation is everything to Ali.
I don’t know how any of this works, but my foot can be reattached. It’s going to suck for a little while. But everything’s going to go back to normal.
A hospital crew lays Ali’s foot on ice. Sophie sees them inject it with antibiotics.
Jody contacts a medevac company and arranges for a plane.
One hour passes, and then two, and then three.
Ali, who is laying in front of a large clock, stares at it as every minute ticks away.
The doctor assures her that in some cases reattachment can happen even several hours after the attack. She takes a deep breath.
At 10 p.m., almost seven hours after she was attacked by a shark, Ali is stretchered onto a small plane. Her foot is placed in the seat next to her. There is no room for Sophie.
Jody, who is still on the phone, tells the nurse accompanying Ali to “please hold her hands — she must feel so alone.”
As the plane takes off, the tourniquet digs into Ali’s upper thigh. She begs the nurse to loosen it. But the nurse says it’s too dangerous with the change in the air pressure.
Am I going to survive? Will my body be able to handle this plane ride? Will I see my parents again?
What will the doctors do? How will they get the muscles to attach?
Will it work?
HANNAH WALSH WAS supposed to accompany Ali and Sophie to Turks and Caicos. Instead, the former Yale diver spends May 24, 2023 working a 14-hour shift at Ryder Trauma Center in Miami. After work, around 8 p.m., she gets a call from Sophie’s sister.
The news makes Hannah’s body go numb. She makes Sophie’s sister repeat herself multiple times before she comprehends it.
Hannah texts Sophie. What happened? Are you OK?
Sophie connects Hannah to the doctor in Turks and Caicos, who sends her three photos: One of Ali’s foot in a flipper, on ice. One of Ali’s left leg. One of an X-ray of Ali’s leg.
Hannah gets in her car and texts Jody.
“Hi Jody. I’ve heard the news. I’m going to be at Ryder Trauma Center. I’m going to be there for Ali. No need to respond.”
Hannah reaches the trauma center at 9 p.m. A group of doctors has congregated at the trauma bay. When she arrives, the doctors tell her that an announcement had gone out a few minutes earlier: a victim of a shark attack was being medevaced to the center that night. They have few details of the attack.
Hannah shares Ali’s photos with the trauma resident. She tells them everything she knows about Ali. She’s a marathon runner. She has Hashimoto’s disease, an autoimmune disorder that causes hypothyroidism. She was a collegiate swimmer.
The doctors outline a step-by-step plan. Save her life. Take her to surgery. Save as much of her leg as possible. Nobody utters the word “reattachment.”
Just past midnight: Hannah hears an announcement over the trauma bay radio: The shark attack victim is being stretchered to the resuscitation ward.
Hannah watches on a video screen. Ali is wearing a white hospital gown, her hair matted and her lips cracked from dehydration.
“I remember thinking, ‘Oh my god, that’s Ali’s hair,” Hannah says. “‘Oh my god, this is my best friend.'”
Hannah runs to the resuscitation ward. Ali sees her friend. “Hi, Hannah,” she says. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
As the doctors get to work, Hannah gets into the bed next to Ali. Ali’s foot sits by their side. Hannah notices the toes are painted in a pale pink polish. The shark had bitten Ali’s foot right above her ankle. Her foot was still intact.
“It looked like someone had taken clay and…” Hannah says, trailing off.
Ali is sure she will be wheeled to the surgery room right away. And that she will be able to run, to walk, to swim with her own two feet again.
JODY AND MITCH touch down in Miami a half hour after Ali’s arrival. They had called a friend who had called a friend, who gave them his private jet. Jody received texts throughout, first from the nurse in the medevac and then from Hannah.
When Jody walks into Ali’s room, Ali bursts into tears. Jody hugs her and kisses her forehead.
“I was like, OK, I’m in a place where I’m safe,” Ali says.
Ali’s trauma team meets with the family. Ali is being stabilized, they say. Her leg is infected. She’s being pumped with antibiotics and pain medication.
The reattachment is never going to happen. The infection alone would kill Ali. “We’re so sorry,” the head trauma doctor says. “We don’t know why it was even said to you.”
There is more. There’s a chance Ali could lose her entire left leg. The tourniquet had cut off the oxygen supply to her leg.
How much of it can you save? Mitch asks.
“Before I can save her leg,” the doctor says. “I have to save her life.”
Fear and disbelief consume Ali.
How am I going to walk? How am I going to get into the shower? How am I going to go down stairs?
Throughout the night, Jody, Mitch and Hannah play songs to soothe Ali’s pain. Hannah holds her hands.
The first surgery is key. The doctors will perform surgical debridement, a procedure to remove infected and dead tissue from Ali’s leg. After that, her body will have to fight off the remaining infection so it doesn’t spread. At 7:30 the next morning, Hannah walks alongside as Ali is wheeled into the operating room. Jody and Mitch pray.
The surgery is a success. The doctors clean up a significant amount of infection and attach a wound VAC (vacuum-assisted closure) to help her leg heal. They inform Jody and Mitch that they’ll perform another surgery to clean up the rest of the infection in a few days. Ali’s body needs to recover and continue to fight infection, they say.
Ali has a single question when she wakes up from surgery.
“How much of my leg will I still have left?”
The doctors don’t have an answer for her yet. Only when all the infection is out of her body will she be prepped for the final surgery — the amputation. Only then will they be able to say how much of her leg needs to be removed.
The question plagues her every waking minute.
Ali can’t bring herself to look at her leg. Her mom holds a blanket over her face whenever nurses clean it or inject medication.
Sophie arrives from Turks and Caicos that afternoon. Words pour out of Ali as soon as she sees her. She doesn’t talk about the actual attack. She can’t. But they go over every single detail of what came after.
“We didn’t even see anything cool in the ocean,” Ali says. “We endured all that for nothing.”
That night, Ali’s vitals drop and agony sets in. Doctors and nurses run around her, pumping in pain medication and antibiotics. Jody plays the song “Million Little Miracles,” by Elevation Worship and Maverick City Music, on her phone.
It’s nothing short of a miracle I’m here
I’ve got some blessings that I don’t deserve
I’ve got some scars, but that’s how you learn
It’s nothing short of a miracle I’m here
She dozes off. She wakes up screaming. Night terrors. Feverishly, she shares details of the attack — in random bursts — with Jody. Her mom holds her hand and rubs her head. They pray.
Twelve hours later, Ali’s body begins to win the battle with the infection. Her vitals stabilize. The Truwit family exhales.
Two days later, she is stretchered in for her second surgery, where they remove the remaining infection.
Now she is ready to be medevaced to New York for the biggest — and final — surgery. The amputation.
With her parents by her side, she flies from Miami to New York. As soon as she lands, her three brothers arrive. High school and college friends visit, too.
The amputation surgery — a six-hour process — is set for May 31, 2023, a week after the attack, at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. It is Ali’s 23rd birthday.
“Please save as much of my leg as possible,” Ali says to the head surgeon.
The doctor’s response makes Ali’s stomach drop.
For her to avoid a lifetime of chronic pain and to increase functionality, her left leg will be amputated under her knee.
They’re asking me to actively give up more of my leg?
Tears stream down Ali’s face.
At 3 p.m. on her birthday — after fasting the entire day for the surgery — Ali is wheeled into the operating room.
Six hours later, the doctors walk out. The surgery is a success. They performed Targeted Muscle Reinnervation — a relatively new procedure to reroute severed nerves to new muscles to allow for organic regrowth of the nerves and to help reduce phantom pain.
When Ali wakes up, she feels a wave of emotions. Gratitude for all the little miracles that have come her way through the past week. Sadness that she has lost a part of her body. Nervous for what her life is going to look like from that day forward.
“It felt final,” she says.
PART 2
For as long as she can remember, Ali has been an athlete, a swimmer. When she was a kid, Ali always broke into a wide grin whenever she jumped into the water. Her grandpa, whom she called Bear, introduced her to Long Island Sound when she was a baby. Most of her childhood memories involve swimming with her family and friends. On special occasions, the Truwit family visited the ocean — in the Caribbean, Florida and New York.
Photos arranged around their house and videos sitting on their shelves show Ali and her three brothers swimming in the ocean.
“[My mom] sent me a bunch of home videos and my little brother is getting demolished by the waves and sobbing and not having a good time,” Ali says. “And it pans over to me… I’m smiling and having the greatest time in the water.”
As Ali grew older, her love for the water turned serious. She began swimming competitively, first in youth meets and then, when she was in high school, for the Chelsea Piers swim team in Stamford.
Ali had an innate ability to swim laps at the same pace, which made her a perfect fit for long-distance events. She was named a USA Swimming Scholastic All-American in 2016 and 2018. Yale, where Bear competed in track and Jody swam, recruited her, and she swam the 500-yard, 1,000-yard and 1,650-yard freestyle.
ALI WAS RELEASED from the hospital and returned to her parents’ home. They moved Ali’s bedroom to the first floor, and for months, Jody slept next to her. Most nights, Ali tossed and turned and gave up on sleep around 3 a.m.
Nobody had prepared her for the pain.
It was so distinct. Sometimes it felt like electric shocks up and down her leg. Sometimes it felt like somebody had wrapped the inside of her leg so tight that it was going to burst.
Then there was the phantom pain.
“It felt like someone was taking a razor blade to my ankle and shaving it to the bone,” Ali says.
Sometimes she felt like somebody was grabbing her big toe and her pinky and trying to “pull them as far apart as they could.”
“We’d literally pray for morning,” Ali says.
When morning did come, small tasks felt ominous.
Ali loved showers growing up and stayed until she was forced to get out. Now she couldn’t bear to stand under the water. The noise reminded her of her arms slapping the ocean water as she swam for her life. When water trickled down her left leg, the pain was excruciating.
Days after returning home, she called James Barone, her longtime youth swimming coach, on FaceTime. Details of the attack came spilling out of Ali. Growing up, Ali and Barone had a running joke. She was terrible at kicking her feet. “Remember all those years you were trying to get me to kick my feet when I was swimming?” she says, a wry smile on her face. “I swam 70 yards to the boat with no foot.”
It took Ali weeks after the surgery to look at her leg.
“To see your leg you’ve seen for 23 years, and it just ends right there … that was hard,” she says. It took her a few more weeks for her to allow her brothers to see her leg. “This is so much better than what’s on the internet,” one of them said, which instantly made her feel better.
She used crutches and wore baggy sweatpants in public so nobody else could see.
Mom, am I ugly? Why are people at the grocery store staring at me? How will men find me attractive? Will I ever be able to carry my child down a flight of stairs?
Will I ever be an athlete again?
Six weeks after her amputation, she started sleeping through the night. Every day, the pain became slightly less all-consuming.
Sleep sparked a new desire. I want to like the water again. I want to love the water again.
FROM THE FRONT windows in her parents’ house, Ali could see the banks of Long Island Sound, where she first learned to swim. Out the back door was her backyard pool, where she played as a child. It beckoned her.
She prepped for days, wondering how her body would react to being back in the water. She started by dipping her right toes in. For two weeks, that’s all she did. She put her toes in, and then went back inside. One day, she asked her brothers and parents if they’d help her get in the pool. Jody attached a floaty around Ali’s waist and thought, “This is a D-I swimmer and I’m attaching a floaty on her?”
Ali sat on the edge of the pool and plunged in.
Suddenly, her mind took her back to Turks and Caicos, when she was kicking and screaming for help, when she craned her neck toward her leg only to see a stream of blood.
This too shall pass.
Her brain interrupts her vision. She takes a deep breath. She’s shivering. She feels the warm water touching her body. She opens her eyes.
I am safe. I am alive. I am home.
She tries to smile at her mom. It’s more of a grimace.
Around then, a Turks and Caicos local sent the Truwits a video from the day of Ali’s attack. It showed a bull shark swimming a few miles from where Ali and Sophie were snorkeling. According to the Florida Museum’s International Shark Attack File, a bull shark, while not common in the waters around Turks and Caicos, was likely responsible for Ali’s attack. Bull sharks are known for their “bump and bite” approach, and the results can be devastating. They are blamed for the third-most documented attacks worldwide in the past 50 years, with a 22% kill rate. Ali’s was the only shark attack — provoked or unprovoked — on the island in 2023. Worldwide, there were 91.
Talking about the attack traumatized Ali, so Jody suggested writing therapy. Ali began writing on her computer. Sometimes she wrote about the details of her attack. Sometimes she wrote about what she wanted in her new life.
She kept going back to the pool. Once a week at first. Then twice. Sometimes the flashbacks consumed her and she rushed out of the pool. Sometimes she felt serene — even if brief — when she moved her arms and legs in the water.
“There were glimmers of hope. Moments where I was like, ‘I like the feeling of the water right now,’ or, ‘I’m happy I’m in here,'” Ali says. “And those moments kept me going to be like, ‘I can fight to reclaim this. It’s going to take work. It’s going to be hard, but I can get back to that place.'”
In her room, she started doing planks with her right leg. She held them for three minutes. Friends showed their support by sending her videos of them doing one-legged planks. Sophie, who lived in Nashville, visited her almost every month. Hannah called her on FaceTime every week from Miami and they spent hours talking.
Ali felt loved.
ALI WAS FITTED with a prosthetic leg about two months after her amputation. The first thing she felt when the prosthetist attached it: pain. Her leg was not used to having five pounds of dead weight hanging off of it.
Maybe worse, she had no idea how to use this thing that was meant to be an extension of her leg.
For weeks, she’d put on the prosthetic leg and just stare at the floor. Her body would say, “Go,” but her brain would reject the idea. She couldn’t feel her foot pressing into the ground.
Her physical therapist gently kicked her prosthetic leg over and over again to override the signal her brain was giving her body. Ali gingerly took steps, sucking in her core for balance. She learned how to use her quads and thigh to drive her leg forward. She remembers trying to step her prosthetic foot down a flight of stairs and her body jerking back. “I’d catch myself from falling,” she says. She spent hours crying during lessons at the prosthetist’s office. How can this be my life?
The prosthetic leg wasn’t a permanent solution. When she gained muscle, lost weight or retained water, it wouldn’t fit properly. She’d have to drive an hour and a half to the prosthetic facility in Hicksville, New York, to get her leg adjusted.
Slowly, the pain faded, and she walked more. But she couldn’t stand anybody seeing it. So she continued to wear baggy pants or flowy dresses. Eventually, she got a cosmetic prosthetic to match her skin tone.
She kept thinking about the water. In September, four months after her amputation, Ali texted Coach Barone.
“If you can stand to look at me, will you come back and coach me?” Without hesitating, Barone said yes. At that point, all Ali cared about was spending some time in the water around somebody who knew her well.
Ali began swimming at Chelsea Piers, just like when she was a kid. When she spotted people she knew, Barone ran over and pleaded with them to ignore Ali. She didn’t want anybody seeing her leg — exposed — in the water. Sometimes he stood guard in front of her until friends and acquaintances passed.
Weeks into her swimming routine, Ali kicked off with her right foot and began her freestyle warmup. A kid who was playing water polo at the far end of the pool didn’t notice her. He moved underneath her. He kicked hard, and his leg smashed into Ali’s belly.
Ali gasped. Her stomach constricted.
Her entire body shook.
She lurched out of the water, her breathing coming out in gasps.
“Oh f—! What happened?” Barone yelled from the corner of the pool.
“I didn’t…” Ali mumbled, gasping. “I didn’t see him.”
It took hours for her to shake off the dread the memory had evoked.
ALI KEPT COMING BACK. She felt the most comfortable on her back, so she began training in backstroke, even more than she had when she was at Yale.
In late October, she convinced her parents to take her to a Para swim meet just outside of Atlanta. Can I still compete?
She swam well. But more meaningful to Ali were the fellow swimmers who told her that if she can overcome something so horrific, then they can do difficult things too. Somebody mentioned that she should try out for the Paralympic Games.
Maybe I can keep swimming.
The progress is not linear. As May — and the first anniversary of her attack — approached, she woke up crying and sweating. She loved her birthdays, but this year, she wanted May to disappear from the calendar. So she decided to focus on her heroes — Sophie, Hannah, her parents, her doctors — and all the miracles that helped keep her alive and accelerated her recovery.
May was also the first time she posted about her attack on social media. She slowly warmed up to interviews, first appearing on “The Kelly Clarkson Show.” A few more reporters reached out. Some conversations left her shaken, but every conversation about the attack made her want to open up more. It felt therapeutic.
“There’s just a million miracles in the story that I try really hard to focus on,” Ali says. “And be grateful for that.”
She continued to swim in more meets. Her times kept getting better. She trained harder.
A new dream took shape.
She signed up for the 400-meter freestyle — the longest distance — at the Paralympic trials. She also signed up for the 100m backstroke and freestyle.
After evaluation, she was categorized as an S10 swimmer: a competitor with the least amount of physical impairment for swimming.
In the 100m backstroke at the trials in Minneapolis in June, Ali was clear of the field at the turn. She proceeded to swim the final 50m at a pace that astonished Barone.
She finished in 1:08:98. First place. The second-fastest swimmer finished four seconds later.
Barone stood poolside, tears streaming down his face.
Her best time before the attack? 1:09.50.
She had swum her fastest backstroke race. Ever. Her time would have put her ahead of two Paris Olympians in the 100-meter backstroke heats.
Ali grinned. Her parents hugged each other in the stands.
“Holy cow,” Barone said to Ali when she hopped out of the water. “You did it.”
She didn’t stop there. She came from way behind to win the 100m freestyle. She finished second in the 400m freestyle.
Thirteen months after a shark bit off her foot, Ali qualified for this year’s Paralympics. Her first event, the 100m freestyle, is on Sept. 1. Sophie and Hannah will be in the stands — part of a group of about 50 family members and friends — supporting her in Paris.
A shark forced me to swim faster than I ever have in my life. Now I am swimming the fastest I ever have for me.
“There’s a lot that I’ve lost here that I’m not getting back,” Ali says. “My foot … I’m never getting that back, but there are things here that I also can fight to get back.”
ON A HOT July day — 14 months after the attack — Ali sits on a bench at A Step Ahead, her prosthetist’s office in Hicksville. Next to her sit her three legs. A black one — her walking leg. A cosmetic one — that she can wear to dinners — that weighs six pounds. “The price you pay for aesthetics,” Erik Schaffer, the head prosthetist, says to her.
The third one, a black running blade with a hooked foot, is brand new. It weighs three pounds. Schaffer has specially designed it for Ali. She wants to run another marathon soon. The words “Team Truwit” are embossed on it. Today will be the first time she runs in it. Coach Barone had warned her not to run until after the Paralympics, but she can’t wait.
She puts on her special socks for her left leg. She attaches the blade onto her leg. She stands up. Her grin gets bigger.
“Mom, take a video of me running at you,” she says. Jody stands at the far corner of the office.
Ali plants her left prosthetic leg on the ground. Then her right foot. She swings her arms. She begins to walk. “It’s so much lighter,” she says. Then, she pushes off, runs. “Use your quads more,” Schaffer says. She leans her body forward, presses her left quad into her prosthetic leg. Her hair flies behind her. She reaches the end of the office. Turns around and runs toward her mom.
“Mom, did you get that?” she asks. Jody nods, smiling.
Schaffer praises Ali’s willpower. Her recovery, to him, is impressive, fast. Ali grins.
But, he adds, Ali is fortunate to have had some of the best surgeons work on her. He’s seen some amputees who after decades still struggle. They can’t do basic tasks.
“Erik, go back to complimenting me,” Ali says, and laughs.
Then she gets serious. She recognizes how difficult life can be after an amputation. Her family doesn’t lack for money or resources, but many do. That’s why she’s launched a foundation called Stronger Than You Think. She is raising money for amputees to get prosthetics and recovery care.
A few weeks ago, she reached out to Lulu Gribbin, a 15-year-old shark attack survivor who lost her left hand and right leg while swimming in Florida. The odds of being attacked by a shark depend on a host of variables — geography, weather, time of day — but they are minuscule for every human on this planet. According to ISAF, among people who go to the beaches in the U.S., the odds of being attacked by a shark are 1 in 11.5 million. Ali felt compelled to let Gribbin know she wasn’t alone.
Ali has just returned from a week with the USA Paralympic team in Colorado Springs, and she talks about the new friends she’s made. Every single one of her teammates had to go through something singular and brave to get to this point, she says. Their struggles remind her of her struggles. It feels surreal that she’ll be competing in Paris.
The Para movement has accelerated her healing, Jody says.
“You have to show your leg, you have to face it yourself, you have to face others seeing it, you have to get comfortable if you’re going to tell your story,” Jody says.
Swinging her arms, Ali takes off again.
GRINNING BRIGHTLY, ALI waves at swimmers, young and old, as she sits at the edge of the Olympic-sized pool at Chelsea Piers. Her prosthetic leg — which she had meticulously removed at the pool’s edge — sits by her side.
Ali wears her bright blue one-piece. She plunges into the pool and her mouth parts into a smile. She takes off. Right arm in front of her, then left.
“How is the shoulder feeling?” Barone asks her when she finishes her warmup.
Since the amputation, she has switched sides for her freestyle breathing. She used to breathe to her right side. Now she turns to her left because she needs a counterweight to keep her balance. The new motion places extra — and new — stress on her right shoulder.
“It’s fine,” she says. But she doesn’t grin.
“‘It’s fine’ means ‘I’m freaked out,'” Barone says.
The shark attack has thrown Ali’s pain scale out of whack.
A shark bit off my foot. I experienced phantom pain that made me want to rip off a body part that didn’t exist. How can I complain about shoulder pain?
She practices for another hour, until Barone sees her wince and calls it off.
Ali has 45 minutes before she needs to head to the doctor for her shoulder appointment. She stops by a table near the cafe inside Chelsea Piers. Jody has brought some photo albums. Ali grabs them and flips the pages.
She pauses at a photo of her at a beach. She’s about 5, wearing a lavender one-piece swimsuit that her grandma had crocheted for her. Her hair is wet and her face is slightly turned toward her little brother Teddy, but you can clearly see her big grin. She’s holding Teddy’s hand as they run away from an incoming wave.
“It’s so sad that it was taken away from somebody who really loved it,” Ali says of the ocean.
She closes the album. She turns around. Written on her black prosthetic are the words to “Million Little Miracles.”
I’ve got some scars, but that’s how you learn
It’s nothing short of a miracle I’m here
After big milestones, the Truwit family goes to the ocean. Jody has been asking Ali where she wants to go after the Paralympic Games.
Ali has not given her an answer. She knows it won’t be the ocean.
“Maybe it’s unwritten,” Ali says. “Maybe in five years, 10 years…”
For now, the pool and the Paralympics are miracles enough.
