Shark: Blood and Dr. Ramos

Shark Attack! by Herbert House Biology Department Elon University, Elon, N.C. It was 5:00 PM on a hot summer afternoon. Eight-year-old Jim Morris, wading in the warm current off Florida's Gulf Coast, swam easily toward his sister Amy and his uncle Robert. But the kids' fun in the shoulder-deep water was cut short by Jim's shouts of "Get it off me! Get it off me!" Amy's screams sliced through the peacefully rolling breakers like a knife, "Help! A shark has bitten off my brother's arm! Call 911!" Nearby swimmers heard the cries as Uncle Robert yelled, "Help us get the shark. It swallowed the arm!" The swimmers converged on the spot, grabbing the six-and-a-half-foot bull shark by the tail and holding on for dear life. The twitching shark was hauled ashore barehanded by the group of men and shot. They pried open the shark's mouth while Robert pulled Jim's right arm out from between its jaws. As the boy's blood soaked into the white sand, lifeguards began CPR and applied a tourniquet. Paramedics arrived to stabilize Jim for transport to nearby Coastal Hospital. His arm was packed in ice and taken along. In the emergency room, Dr. Elaine Rogers, the physician on duty, quickly ordered multiple transfusions to restore the boy's blood supply as the ER team began stabilizing his vital signs. Dr. Rogers began assembling the operating room team that would attempt to reattach Jim's arm. She called Ronan McBane, a microvascular surgeon, at his home. "Ronan, we have a cleanly severed arm due to a shark bite. It looks like it was just chopped off, with not much shredding of the tissue. The sharp-edged teeth of the shark bit through the boy's arm so cleanly it almost seems to have been severed by a cleaver. The boy is eight years old and, although he is still in pretty bad shape, we think that since the arm was recovered and is in reasonably good condition, we have a good chance at success." Further conversation convinced Ronan that reattachment was possible. By the time Dr.