Originally appeared on E! Online
Ali Truwit told her parents to put away all of her shorts and mini-skirts. The NCAA swimmer didn't want to wear anything that would show her prosthesis, let alone what remained of her left leg after she was attacked by a shark while snorkeling in Turks and Caicos on May 24, 2023.
"To see your leg you've seen for 23 years, and it just ends right there...that was hard," Truwit told ESPN of the emotional trauma that accompanied the physical discomfort of having her leg amputated below the knee.
But it wasn't long before the Yale graduate, who spent four years swimming for the Bulldogs, missed the water. With a floaty around her stomach just in case her body had an unpredictable reaction, she waded into her family's backyard pool in July 2023.
Fast-forward one year and she isn't only feeling more confident: she's competing in the 400m freestyle, 100m freestyle and 100m backstroke at the 2024 Paralympics, now underway in Paris through Sept. 8.
Before she was medevacked from the hospital in Turks and Caicos to Ryder Trauma Center in Miami, the boat crew that took Truwit and her friend Sophie Pilkinton out snorkeling actually found her foot, intact and still in the flipper.
The appendage was packed in ice for the trip back to the U.S., giving Truwit hope that doctors could reattach it.
But upon arrival in Miami, it wasn't even an option. Her leg was infected, and stopping that from spreading was priority No. 1. First, she underwent a procedure to remove infected and dead tissue from her injured leg, then — once she started to respond to antibiotics and her vital signs stabilized — another surgery to clear out remaining signs of the infection.
After which she was flown to New York, where doctors performed what's known as a transtibial amputation on May 31, 2023, Truwit's 23rd birthday.
"That feels crazy, especially just thinking about where I was a little over a year ago," Ali said on TODAY Aug. 23, 15 months after a shark bit her left foot clean off and took a piece out of her leg before she and Pilkinton were able to get away.
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"We made the split-second decision to swim for our lives," recalled Ali, who initially thought a dolphin had sidled up to her, "roughly 75 yards in the open ocean water back to the boat."
Once they were back onboard, Pilkinton — who in addition to being Truwit's teammate at Yale was also a medical student — tied a tourniquet around her friend's upper thigh.
Truwit told ESPN that she remembered mumbling to Pilkinton, "I ran a marathon last week. And now I don't have a foot?"
Back home in Connecticut with her parents, Jody and Mitch Truwit, at first Truwit couldn't even stand being in the shower, the water pressure hurting what was left of her leg and the sound reminding her of struggling to swim away from the shark.
But six weeks after the amputation, as the pain lessened and she got more sleep, she became determined to love the water again.
"There were glimmers of hope," she told ESPN of her first weeks back in the pool. "Moments where I was like, 'I like the feeling of the water right now,' or, 'I'm happy I'm in here.' 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.'"
That September, barely four months after the attack, she asked her former coach, James Barone, if he'd join her again.
Truwit ended up taking home a silver medal from the U.S. Paralympics Swimming National Championships in Orlando last December, then won three events en route to qualifying for the 2024 Paralympics at the U.S. Trials in June.
She is categorized as S10, which is for swimmers with minimal weakness affecting their legs, missing feet, a missing leg below the knee or hip problems.
"If at any point in time she had texted me or called me and said, 'You know what, I’m just going to curl up in a ball today, and I’m going to cry,'" Barone, who came out of retirement to coach Truwit, said on TODAY, "everyone in the world would be like, 'That checks out. You take the day, you do whatever.'" But in her case, he added, "Not once. She has never once missed a day of practice."
But in addition to the reps and the workouts that were making her physically stronger, Truwit said, "Every time someone tells me that hearing my story helps them through their trauma, or watching my outlook or my mindset or the way that I bounce back has encouraged them, that they can do it too, that heals me. That helps me. That gives meaning to me of an otherwise random trauma."
Truwit worked with trauma therapists, as well, "so that I don't let fear rule my life," she told the Associated Press. "I had lost enough and anything that was on the table for me to regain, I was going to fight to regain it."
Mom Jody, a Yale swimming alum who ran the Copenhagen Marathon with her daughter 10 days before the attack, called Truwit "a workhorse who refuses to give up. That's who she was before the attack and amputation and that’s who she is every single day now."
Truwit has also, incidentally, become much more comfortable with her prostheses — per ESPN, she has a black one for walking around and a cosmetic one that matches her skin tone — and she hopes to be able to run another marathon sooner rather than later, using a blade.
"There are a lot of challenges for me with body image, learning to love my new body and accept it and learn that it's beautiful in its own right," she said on Good Morning America in August. "And I think that's been something that's been so huge for me."
At the same time, she noted, "I'm relearning life without an ankle. I have to learn how to sit again and stand again, and walk again, and run, and how to do stairs and the everyday challenges."
Throughout her recovery, Truwit has made a point of spotlighting everyone who's been in her corner, from her parents, her three brothers, her coach and friends to the doctors and staff at the various hospitals where she was treated.
And her support system is vast, Truwit's Instagram awash in photos of all the people who have showed up for her.
"Today marks one year since the shark attack," she posted May 24. "In a flash, my life was almost taken from me. And, in a flash, I’m fighting to take it right back. I grieve, and I cry, and then I remember without my heroes, I’d have died. Making Today Celebrate My Heroes Day."
She explained to ESPN, "There's just a million miracles in the story that I try really hard to focus on. And be grateful for that."
Knowing she was lucky that her family could cover her considerable medical expenses, Truwit has also launched the foundation Stronger Than You Think, to help with the costs of prostheses and recovery care for amputees.
"I love comeback stories," she told the AP ahead of her trip to Paris. "I've definitely relied on other people's comeback stories to help me hold on to what feels like a bold and unrealistic hope — of fighting off a shark and surviving and losing a limb and making the Paralympics all in a year."
There were "a lot of dark days" between then and now, she noted. "But I'm alive, and I almost wasn't."
When she qualified for the Paralympics, she said, "I think hearing my name on that team was just a reminder to me that I'm stronger than I think. That we're all stronger than we think."
