Children’s & Women’s Hospital nurse Delanie Richardson helps save shark attack victim

By Casandra Andrews
candrews@health.southalabama.edu

For almost nine months as a new nurse, Delanie Quinnelly Richardson, RN, spent her evenings caring for mothers and babies inside suites with soft lighting at Children’s & Women’s Hospital.

Those quiet hospital halls – save for an occasional crying infant – was a world away from what happened to her earlier this summer on a sweltering day on the Florida Gulf Coast.

During a weekend with friends in Rosemary Beach, Delanie was leaving the water when she noticed blood floating on the surface and saw a teenager clearly in distress. As a group of men carried the injured girl to shore, Delanie’s nursing instincts took over. She quickly cleared a spot on the sand and shouted at a gathering crowd for specific items: Towels, shirts, blankets.

While her training in nursing school at Coastal Alabama Community College prepared her for trauma care, she clocked only a single shift inside an emergency room before graduation. Fortunately, what she learned during a course called Stop the Bleed, she said, gave her the skills and confidence to help save the teenager following a shark attack that could have ended the teen’s life.

Thinking quickly, Delanie was able to use the drawstring from a man’s swim trunks as a tourniquet to stop 15-year-old Lulu Gribbin from bleeding where a shark severed her hand and lower arm. Other medical professionals worked furiously to slow blood flow from a severe bite on her upper leg.

In the days following the attack on June 7, Delanie shared her story with local, state and national news outlets, and also with her USA Health colleagues during a town hall meeting at Children’s & Women’s Hospital. Her mother attended the event where Delanie was thanked for her courage and given flowers.

After receiving permission from Lulu’s family, Delanie also wrote about the events following the shark attack on a website that’s helping to keep friends and family informed of the teen’s progress at a hospital in North Carolina that specializes in recovery following amputations.

Here’s an excerpt from Delanie’s CaringBridge post:

Lulu was in and out of consciousness much of the time, Delanie wrote, “but she was alert and her eyes got wide when I tied the tourniquet on her. Her arm is small, and since she’s a teenager the drawstring was perfect for the job… I felt so bad for hurting her further but remembered what my instructors said and continued to pull it tight, as tight as I could, till the blood stopped.”

“I was flashing back to my nursing instructors, Valerie Rumbley, Jennifer Killingsworth and Carman Godfrey and the program they taught us called Stop the Bleed. It taught us how to tie a tourniquet, pack a wound, and hold pressure. This class was not mandated by the school or necessary for our RN license, rather it was something our instructors thought we should know and went out of their way to have it taught to us.

“I remember my instructors telling me, if it’s not hurting them, it’s not tight enough. ‘They’re going to beg for you to take it off of them, but losing a limb is better than being dead.’ Those words echoed in my head the entire time I was on that beach.”

Eventually paramedics arrived on the scene that day, and rushed Lulu and another shark bite victim to a nearby hospital.

In the days after the accident, Delanie was able to get in touch with the family and eventually visit Lulu in the hospital in North Carolina, where the two embraced.

“I am fortunate enough that I was able to hug her and feel the warmth of the blood being back in her body unlike that awful day on the beach," Delanie wrote. "It brought tears to my eyes. I am grateful to be able to see the outcome of what I helped with that day. That I was chosen by God to be there for Lulu that day.

"I don’t feel like a hero, I just feel blessed.”