Leah Stewart has shared a sad update on her condition, three and a half months after she was attacked by a shark in Sydney.
The mum-of-one lost her arm after she was attacked by a great white shark while swimming between the flags at Coogee Beach in June this year.
Posting to Instagram on Tuesday, Leah revealed the skin graft she recently underwent on her injured left leg had failed.
“This is not the update I was hoping for,” the 34-year-old opened the Instagram reel.
“Unfortunately this is not the post I was wanting to do but I had my graft checked yesterday and it was confirmed that it failed.”
“So, I am feeling pretty devastated, had quite a few tears and now we’re not really sure where to go from here.”
The Sydney mum said her leg wound was still “open” despite it being over three months since she was attacked.
However, Leah said there was one silver lining to her situation, it means she can have a break from a medical device called the Vacuum-Assisted Closure (VAC), which was holding the skin graft in place.
“I guess the only good thing is we’re trying something different, so I’m having a little break from the vac machine which means I can move a little bit more freely,” she explained.
Leah then stepped back from the camera and showed her followers what her leg looks like now.
“I guess a lot of you wouldn’t know what a skin graft looks like so I’ll actually show you,” she said. “I haven’t shown my legs yet so I’m a little nervous about this.
She then pointed at the top of her right thigh and explained that was where they took the skin from.
“It’s still pretty raw but thankfully it’s healing. And they put it on my left leg but unfortunately it didn’t work,” she said.
“Anyway we keep moving forward.”
In August, Leah told 60 Minutes she tried to fight off the shark because she wanted to live for her daughter August.
“In my head, I was like ‘you ugly f**ker, you are not taking me away from my daughter’,” she said.
“I twisted myself around and I just started punching it over and over and over again… I think I must have got a really good one in. And so it let me go.”
In the interview, Leah explained that she had just finished her regular Saturday morning swim, and was heading back to shore, when she heard a woman shriek behind her.
She turned around and saw a large fin coming towards her.
“I turned and there was a huge, huge fin behind her. It was massive,” she said. “I looked at the size of it and I realised that’s not a dolphin.”
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