Woman left with ‘shark hand’ after doctors sew it inside stomach during surgery
Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the ER.
A UK woman’s hand was left looking like a cartoon shark head after doctors sewed the appendage inside her stomach to fight a vicious infection. A video chronicling her “Jaws”-dropping mitt currently boasts over 75 million views on TikTok.
“I wasn’t aware my hand was going to look like a shark’s head ’til it had actually been released from my abdomen,” Sadie Kemp, 34, said of her bizarre affliction, the Mirror reported.
In the video, which she did “not expect to go viral,” the 34-year-old Petersborough native can be seen making her Megalodon-esque mitt “hum” the “Jaws” theme before dunking it in a bowl of water.
Kemp’s nearly fatal ordeal occurred Christmas Day after the former health care worker reported to the hospital after experiencing sharp pain in her kidney. Doctors diagnosed Kemp with a kidney stone and transferred her to the emergency ward to remove it.
Disaster struck during the operation after the mother of two’s limbs became afflicted with sepsis, a life-threatening condition that occurs when the body attempts to fight off infection and ends up attacking and damaging its own tissues. It is the leading cause of death in hospitals, often resulting from complications during surgery.
In order to save her life, medics placed Kemp into a medical coma for 11 days, and ended up amputating all the fingers on her left hand, Peterborough Today reported. Doctors then sewed her hand inside a pouch in her abdomen to maintain blood circulation, which Kemp says resulted in her high-fiver becoming a dead ringer for a shark.
“I looked at it for the first time and I moved what was left of my thumb and I was just like ‘Wow, it looks like a shark,'” Kemp explained of her hand, which also evokes a lobster claw or boxing glove.
Thankfully, the gutsy gal has taken the sharky side effect in stride, even using her predator-evoking appendage to perform tricks on camera, including pantomiming a fish’s movements and applying makeup. In one clip with 4 million views, she can be seen making her shark hand lip-sync along to the addicting “Baby Shark” song like a fleshy shadow puppet.
“I did a video of my story and I have been told it is trending which is absolutely amazing,” gushed Kemp, who has been posting on TikTok for only a week.
Unfortunately, the poor woman isn’t out of the woods yet as doctors will reportedly have to amputate her other hand and both her legs below the knees, Peterborough Today reported.
In addition, Kemp, who recently lost her job at the NHS, fears she could also lose her home, which was provided by a charity following a financially devastating divorce.
Kemp’s friend Stephanie King recently created a GoFundMe page to help support her and her family with “expenses and fees since being in hospital with sepsis.” It has raised over $38,000 as of Tuesday morning.
Kemp says she ultimately “wants to raise awareness about the dangers of sepsis.”
“I have lost a lot through sepsis, my limbs, a relationship, independence and I just don’t want it happening to as many people as it does happen to,” she said.
Data from 2017 linked sepsis to approximately 11 million deaths worldwide — roughly 20% of annual deaths worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.
